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After the groundbreaking Final Fantasy VII, Square was swimming in money. Things didn't look like they could ever go wrong after ten years of good games. After VII, Sakaguchi wanted to create a game that was a reflection on the past of the series. After reuniting a development team that consisted of mostly newcoming developers, he gave Yoshinori Kitase free reign to do whatever he wanted with VII's development team. The result was Final Fantasy VIII, the second game (The first being FFII) that divided the fans. It's really one of those games where you either love it or you hate it. I should warn you right now: If you love this game and can't stand anyone saying anything bad about it just stop reading my review.
The Story:
Once again, we have a Sci-Fi Fantasy setting. This game tells the story of a group of young members of a mercenary force called SeeD (Yes, this is how you spell it) that accept jobs of various kinds for money. Eventually, they find out that they're pawns of a messed up plan by the people in charge of SeeD and are thrown into dangerous battles for the fate of the world. The story of this game unfortunately is very bad for various reasons.
First, the bad: The storytelling is very confusing. It frequently lacks clear explanations for what happens, and rarely takes a break for the player to assimilate what happened. There are also a lot of plot holes and scenes that don't really add anything to the main plot. I'm serious, I could cut a lot of plot points that don't go anywhere and scenes that feel out of place. It should be noted that this is at the time of this review's writing the only game in the series in which the primary focus of the plot is a romance between two characters. I'm all for that, as I love me a good love story, but the romance in this game is not well developed, as the transition of one of the lovers from barely caring to doing anything for the other is very rushed and doesn't feel real. As for the other characters, some are better than others, but most of them lack personality. The most underdeveloped character is the main villain, who completely lacks motivation for wanting to destroy everything. I tolerated this in the NES era, didn't like it in FFV, and here it annoys me. I don't understand why are there so many pointless scenes in this game when they could have been used to develop the characters and their relationships.
Now, the good: There is a sub-plot about characters living years before the game's present time that feels well developed and contains genuinely heartfelt moments. I'm serious, I wish the story was about these characters as they are much more likable than the leads. Also, even though the romance is not well developed, there are well executed moments with the two lovers even though they're not enough to make the romance believable.
If you're reading this and are interested in details about why I didn't like the story, message me on my Youtube account and we'll figure something out.
Overall, this is a very bad story with a mediocre cast.
4/10
The Gameplay:
Despite keeping the core gameplay from the previous game, FFVIII decided to try something completely different with its gameplay mechanics. I'm all for that as well, but different doesn't necessarily mean better. Despite having exp based levels, the main way to make characters stronger is through the new "Junction System". Characters start out with only the attack command and the only way to give him or her new commands and abilities is by equipping the character with a Guardian Force (This game's summon creatures). While a GF is equipped, the character earns ability points after a battle which gives the GFs new abilities. The character can only equip commands if the GF has that command on its list of equippable abilities. MP is also gone. To use magic, you have to collect spells as if they were items. I don't really like this. In the NES era, treating spells as items was fine, but in a world that's supposed to feel real like this one, I have problems with collecting things that don't have any physical form whatsoever. It doesn't make any sense. Another problem I have with this system is that magic is mostly used to be junctioned to each of the character's individual stats to increase their value. This is the primary way of making characters strong. It basically means that casting magic against the enemies can be a bad thing, since it's one less spell to junction to your stats. I'm sorry, but this kinda ruins any control I would like to have in how each character grows. Trying to make someone primarily a mage is a bad idea as that character will have less magic available to junction to the stats everytime he or she casts a spell. Don't get me wrong, I realize a lot of early games in the genre were about paying attention to stats and increasing their values individually, but there's a reason they don't make RPG's like that anymore: It prevents each character from feeling unique, not to mention that it makes it easy to have an overpowered party. Also, this system pretty much makes leveling up characters with exp rather pointless. I've been told that apparently enemy levels are always around your character levels, but I can't help but feel that mechanic could have been done in another way. I completed the game with a lv. 23 character as my strongest and a lv. 9 character as my weakest. When this happens, I can't help but feel that the level up mechanic is there mostly for the sake of being there.
Despite all that, the game does have all the core elements of a Final Fantasy game and i do admit some of my problems with the Junction system are personal problems.
Overall the gameplay while not outright horrible, does have serious flaws and is very unlike what made earlier games great.
5/10
The Music:
After seven great soundtracks in a row, even Uematsu disappointed me in this game. Don't get me wrong, I think the OST is good. I don't think it's up to the standards of the series though. Aside from a handful of tracks, the soundtrack is for the most part not very memorable or affecting. It's all well composed, it just doesn't have the heart that the music in the series is known for. It should be noted that this was the first game to have a main vocal theme song: Eyes on Me. It's not very good though. The vocals are mediocre, the lyrics are not very well translated and the composition is forgettable.
6/10
The Graphics:
The graphics in this game are excellent. This game uses the FMV technology from FFVII brilliantly, which leads to great eye candy. The character models were also improved from the last game and now they actually look like people. The only problem with the visual presentation is the character and monster design. It's not that it's outright bad, it's just bland and not impressive at all. Some characters actually have bad designs(The main villain's laughable appearance makes it impossible to take her seriously).
7.5/10
I'm going to be honest: I hate this game. The story is uninteristing and badly executed, the gameplay is very flawed and at times boring and the presentation is not exactly stellar.
Final Grade: 5.5/10
Fortunately we still had one more masterpiece coming our way after this game. Join me next time when i review the sadly underrated Final Fantasy IX. See you next time ;)
