Final Fantasy VIII
PlayStation
Nostalgia Factor:
I had such high expectations for Final Fantasy 8 when it first came out. The only other Final Fantasy game I had ever played was FF7, which I thought was an incredible, life changing game. Surely they would take the formula that made FF7 so great and improve upon it to deliver a truly breathtaking sequel.
That didn’t happen. Not only did I not really like the game, I never even bothered to finish it. I didn’t like the combat. I wasn’t a fan of the story. I made it to the fourth disc and gave up because I couldn’t beat one of the game’s final bosses. There it sat on my shelf for nearly 20 years when I finally picked it back up again and completed it back in 2007 or 2008.
Fast forward to 2020. If you’d asked me a couple months ago what I thought about Final Fantasy 8 I would have responded with a thoroughly unenthusiastic “meh.” I still don’t think the game is as great as 7, but I have to say I now like it much more than I ever did in the past. I tempered my expectations and came into it with an open mind. I didn’t want to come into the game hating it or holding a grudge because it wasn’t FF7. I wanted to enjoy it for what it was. A lot of people love this game, and I think I was finally able to see what it is about this game that people enjoy so much.
Story:
Admittedly, this game’s storyline is a bit of a mess. I’m not going to recap the entire thing, but instead I’ll offer a quick summary.
The main character of Final Fantasy 8 is Squall, an introverted student at Balamb Garden, one of multiple Gardens that act as schools that raise young people to be mercenaries for hire. The game opens with you and your classmates embarking on their final mission before graduation. In this mission, you have to stop invading Galbadian forces from taking over the city of Dollet. Your mission is successful, and you later attend a graduation party for your class. It is there that Squall meets Rinoa, a happy and bubbly young woman who acts as his complete opposite. She forces him to dance and attempts to get him to open up a bit (unsuccessfully).
Now that Squall and his friends have graduated, they become official members of SeeD, the mercenary group. They are sent off on a mission to help an underground resistance fight off Galbadian occupation in the small town of Timber. Turns out this is where Rinoa is from, and Squall is reunited with the young woman he met at the graduation party. They team up and fight off the Galbadians once again. In order to eliminate the suddenly aggressive Galbadian threat, Squall and his fellow SeeDs are sent to assassinate their leader, a sorceress by the name of Edea.
The assassination attempt is a failure and Squall and company get locked up in prison. While they are locked up, Edea launches an offensive against the Gardens, believing them to be the cause behind the assassination attempt. Squall escapes from prison and arrives just in time to save Balamb Garden from destruction. The other Garden is not so fortunate.
While surveying the damage, Squall and his party come to the sudden realization that they all grew up together in the same orphanage. Due to their use of GFs (which act as this game’s summons), they’ve forgotten that they were all childhood friends. They also realize that the former mistress of the orphanage was Edea, the woman who would go on to be the very same Sorceress that they just tried to assassinate. This is one of the “questionable” twists of this game that people often complain about. Seems a little convenient but also unnecessary that these people all are connected and grew up together. But whatever. It is what it is.
The rest of the game becomes a quest to stop not Edea, but the Sorceress Ultimecia that has taken control of her body. Ultimecia is a time traveling sorceress from the future who is attempting to master the power of time compression to flatten time and make past, present, and the future all exist at the same time in a universe that she has complete control over. Again, this is a really bizarre and questionable plot twist that people often complain about. The game’s storyline just kind of seems to meander from random event to random event.
Weird stuff ensues. Rinoa is infected with Ultimecia’s power and goes into a coma. She is blasted off into space in order to be treated far away from people, I guess. But this backfires as Rinoa is possessed by Ultimecia and made to free the sleeping body of the evil Sorceress Adel, which has been suspended in space. A lunar event is triggered and all kinds of monsters spout from the moon and start coming down to the planet below. We have now officially gone completely off the rails.
Rinoa’s body, free from the influence of Ultimecia (who has transferred her power to the newly awakened Adel) floats helplessly in space. Squall rescues her and brings her aboard the Ragnarok where the two share a touching romantic moment. The game doesn’t show it or even really hint at it, but they totally get it on. I know they do.
Squall pilots the Ragnarok back to the planet and a final plan is drawn up to use time compression against Ultimecia to defeat her on her own ground. The plan is successful, and our heroes live happily ever after.
Yayyyy!
This is a very over-simplified plot summary and I know I am leaving a lot of stuff out. I didn’t even mention how periodically Squall and his party black out and have flashbacks to the life of a young soldier named Laguna and his friends. These flashbacks were instigated by a woman named Ellone, who was attempting to get Squall to change the past to alter the present… unsuccessfully. In the end, this whole side plot seems a bit unnecessary and useless. I always thought it was going to go somewhere amazing, but it just kind of peters out eventually and gives way to all the Ultimecia crap.
So yeah. I mean, it isn’t necessarily a horrible story but it is a bit meandering and directionless. The orphanage twist seems a bit forced, the Laguna stuff goes nowhere, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the quest to bring down Ultimecia the same way I cared about the quest to bring down Shinra and Sephiroth in Final Fantasy 7. There is a very real lack of cohesion to be found here. Even the ending is a bit vague and ambiguous.
One thing I did care about was the relationship between Squall and Rinoa. I first played this game when I was in high school. I was a quiet loner who heavily identified with Squall. It was always my dream to have a fun, bubbly young woman like Rinoa swoop into my life and completely change things for me forever. That never happened to me as a pimply teenage kid, but it was always something that gave me hope. Playing this game in the present day really brings back a lot of those memories for me.
Gameplay:
This game shares many similarities with Final Fantasy 7, but there are some major, major differences that set it apart. Here are the similarities: You run around. You talk to people. You can buy items and upgrades at shops. Combat is turn-based. There are random encounters. On the surface, this game is very similar to its predecessor.
Here is where it gets different. Everything is based off of your ability to junction Guardian Forces (or GFs) to your character. When a GF is junctioned, it allows you to select four actions you can assign to your character during combat. At the beginning of the game, these options are attack (which is an absolute must), magic, item, GF, and draw. The first three options are pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t bother going into them. GF calls your Guardian Force to attack your enemy. This works basically as a summon from past FF games. Unlike past games, there is no limit as to how many times you can do this in battle. In the game’s early going, I found myself just calling GFs over and over again to do my attacks for me. The only downside to doing this: their animations are really, really, REALLY long and drawn out.
The Draw command is what sets this game apart from every other entry in the Final Fantasy series. Instead of coming equipped with a set of magical spells or having the ability to learn new spells as you level up, your characters start the game as blank slates. You have to use the Draw command to pull spells out of the enemies you fight. For example, a random encounter starts. Select your enemy and pick the Draw option from the battle menu. Your enemy should have a number of spells (cure, thunder, fire, etc) that you can draw. Once you draw spells from your enemy, you can then use these spells in battle. Not only can you use them in battle, you can open the in-game menu and junction them to your parties character attributes. For example, junctioning fire to Squall’s attack attribute raises your attack value and also does fire damage to your enemies. The more spells of a certain type you have junctioned (say, you draw 100 fires from your enemies), the more powerful these effects will be.
As the game goes on and your GFs level up, the more junctioning options your characters receive. Your GFs also learn new abilities as they level up that you can assign to your character, like strength +20%, Boost, or HP +20%, etc.
The combat takes a while to get used to, but once I got the track of it, it became very easy to handle. I think this is one of the reasons I never liked this game as a kid: I never really figured the junctioning system out. Now it is like second nature to me.
Graphics:
Final Fantasy 8 can be a bit rough to look at in present times, given how far graphics have come in the last 20 plus years. Characters are jagged and messy looking. Backgrounds are static and 2D. The world map is plain looking and not too horribly impressive. But you have to remember that this game was considered cutting edge in 1999. At the time it was certainly a step up graphically from Final Fantasy 7.
One thing that does stand the test of time: the cutscenes. They still look really good, really cinematic. They give the game a little flare. Also, the backgrounds and environments have a lot of character. Whether you’re walking the halls of Balamb Garden, taking in the sights at Fisherman’s Horizon, or checking out the nightlife in Deling City, each area has its own unique and distinctly Final Fantasy 8 feel to it.
Sound:
FF8’s musical score is really good. Lots of catchy tunes everywhere you go. I don’t think this game’s music is as good as other games in the series (FF6 and 7 definitely have this one beat), but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t pretty freaking good. Sound effects are good too. Love it or hate it, the little chiming sound when you make menu selections is pretty much the same as it is in FF7. Other than that, nothing really stands out as far as sound effects go.
Overall:
My opinion on Final Fantasy 8 has definitely changed for the better. I had a really fun time with this game. No, it’s not Final Fantasy 7, but then again what is? Now that enough time has passed, I am able to look at this game on its own merits and stop with the constant comparisons. This is a good, fun game. It has its flaws, most notably with its plot-hole filled wacko story, but it is still a fun game.
One gripe I guess I should bring up is just how slow-moving the game is. I am not talking about the pacing, I am talking about the speed of your characters. Running from one end of Balamb Garden to the other is a slow, torturous affair. The characters talk really slowly. Some GFs can take several minutes to launch their attacks in battle. I never noticed this back in 1999, but in present times the slowness is almost painful. If you are going to play this game, I would suggest getting the remastered version for the PlayStation 4. Not only does the game have smoother, sharper graphics, you are also given the opportunity to speed things up to three times the speed of the normal game. A walk that might have taken you a full minute or two before can now be done in a matter of seconds. It makes a world of difference.
If you are a fan of classic JRPGs, you can’t go wrong with Final Fantasy 8. I almost feel bad for hating it so much in my youth. It is a ton of fun. If old school turn-based JRPGs aren't your thing, however, I’d suggest you take a pass on it.
Final Score:
A-
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