Final Fantasy VIII Review (Sony PlayStation, 1999)

Final Fantasy VII was going to be a tough game for Squaresoft to follow up. There were very high expectations considering the fact that this was a generation defining release. I absolutely couldn’t wait for Final Fantasy VIII. Early screenshots and videos (we had just gotten the internet when the game was revealed) had me absolutely hyped. I dug the style, and trusted that Squaresoft would deliver because why not? Up to this point I had not played a bad Final Fantasy. The wait was endless. I was stoked when I finally popped the disc into my console, and I wasn’t disappointed. At first. I shelved the game for years after completing it and only recently took a second look at it. Read on to find my modern take on this storied release.

Let me start out by saying that I was in denial about Final Fantasy VIII. I was determined to enjoy it. I tried so hard to get as much as possible out of this four disc adventure. As time went on my I had a more difficult time remembering the good times. My brother played through it multiple times, and as I watched I couldn’t help but feel a little sick over it. I know, that’s an extreme reaction to a video game, but that’s honestly the best way to describe it. As time went on I became more and more sure that Final Fantasy VIII wasn’t actually any good. I went in with an open mind, and honestly I did enjoy some parts of it. For the most part I was disappointed to find that my memories weren’t clouded. Final Fantasy VIII is not very good to be honest.

This installment (like all other mainline Final Fantasy titles) is a self enclosed story. The world is one of technology sprinkled with fantasy elements. You play as a young mercenary who lives and works within a construct called Garden. He is what is known as SeeD (fighters for hire) that have the ability to use guardian forces (think summons from prior games) which allow them to use magic and other abilities. The story begins as our hero, Squall, undertakes the test to become an official SeeD. He makes friends along the way who join his cause as the world comes under crisis with only he and his merry band here to save the day. The plot has your typical focus on romance (this was a heavy advertising point of it) and features many twists and turns.

The story is garbage. I won’t usually come out and say it so bluntly, but that’s what it is. The game has a terrible narrative. It even starts off weak. Squall is a highly unlikable character. For the first half of the game he’s detached from absolutely everything happening around him. I suppose it’s edgy, but who cares really? The other characters are very one dimensional. Squall is the only one that experiences any kind of character development, and even that is super sudden and doesn’t fit with how the game has set him up to this point. Let’s not get started on what is the singular worst plot twist in any role playing game. It’s really that bad.

So finally we get to the gameplay. Final Fantasy has for the most part been traditional up to this point. Final Fantasy VIII turns the basic concepts on its head, but not in a good way. I’ll get to that later. You wander the world with a party of three (more characters than this join, but you’re given the option of who to bring along with Squall for the most part). Final Fantasy VIII uses the active time battle system wherein each character gets a turn when a bar fills at the bottom of the screen. From here you can select commands. By default you have attack, and so let’s focus on that. This makes your character strike an opponent of your choice with their equipped weapon. Damage is determined numerically, and when an enemy (or your character for that matter) loses all their hit points they die.

It’s pretty basic stuff, right? Well here’s where Final Fantasy VIII falls flat on its face. Attack is all anyone has by default. You have to equip a guardian force, and then add commands to their lineup. Even using an item has to be set to your character. That’s just ridiculous. It gets worse when you have to junction the magic command to them as well. Even special moves have to be set in this fashion. This means that each character is basically a blank slate, and you have to set commands to them before they can do anything else other than attack. It’s absolutely asinine. Imagine a Mario game wherein you have to wade through menus to add the ability to jump to the character.

That’s not even the worst part. Oh no not by a longshot. You can junction the magic command to your characters but you must draw each individual spell from enemies. Magic is consumable. It makes absolutely no sense. Whomever came up with this idea was seriously out of touch with not only the genre, but with video games in general. It adds needless repetition to the gameplay. I’d like to say that’s the worst thing about Final Fantasy VIII, but it’s not.

One thing I love about RPGs is grinding. Even just fighting battles is rewarding as you watch your characters get stronger. If you’re a fan of the genre then chances are you feel the same way to some degree. Final Fantasy VIII actually punishes you for fighting battles. Enemy stats scale with your party’s level. What’s worse is that they become stronger at a faster rate than you. Every battle you fight and win makes the game more difficult. I mean, what? How does that make any kind of sense? If you want to have an easier go of the story you’ll actually run from every enemy encounter. This is made easier by an ability learned from a GF (through gaining AP) that disables random battles. Thankfully bosses don’t give experience points, but there are other scripted forced fights here.

If you can’t tell by now I absolutely hate that each character is basically a blank slate that you customize via junctioning Gfs. As I already mentioned these learn new abilities (which include moves, out of battle abilities, stat boosts, etc) via AP from battles. What’s nice is that you can equip multiple guardian forces, and there’s no limit to how many you can use on any one person. Many of these summons are obtained in the story but several can only be found off the beaten path. This opens the game up to exploration (especially when you get the airship) but again, you’ll have to run from every battle unless you’re interested in giving yourself an extreme disadvantage.

With all that out of the way there are some interesting aspects to the game. You can junction magic spells to your stats via Gfs for example. This means you can simply draw spells from enemies and then run, but the system is taken a bit farther. Final Fantasy VIII features a card game which you can challenge most NPCs to. When you win you get one of their cards. An early guardian force you obtain allows you to convert weakened enemies into cards. What’s nice about this system is that you can, with an ability learned from guardian forces, convert these cards into spells and items. This is how you make your party powerful, but unfortunately you can break the game very early on using this system. This is one element I liked. I spent more time collecting cards than actually fighting enemies.

So what we’re left with is an empty shell of a Final Fantasy game. This one disregards franchise mainstays in an effort to try and be different, and it doesn’t work for me. There are other problems I have with the game as well. Final Fantasy VIII has the most vanilla and boring world map of any installment in the series. It doesn’t help that your walking pace is like a slug through molasses. There aren’t really any interesting sights to see. The world is somewhat interesting (thanks to the lore), but the world map and every town just feels so generic. Final Fantasy VIII feels like a game with absolutely zero passion behind it made by people who tried something different but didn’t understand the genre.

At the time of release Final Fantasy VIII was a great looking game however. The characters no longer look like Lego figures. They’re highly detailed and have realistic proportions. The animations were really something else at the time. Even today I’d say FF8 looks decent. The backgrounds (especially when you reach the end of the game) are highly detailed and look amazing. The low resolution does it no favors however. The soundtrack however is not up to usual Final Fantasy standards. This game has a lot of real duds as far as music goes. Some of the tracks work really well and set great atmosphere (Balamb Garden, Timber Owls, etc.) It does however feel like Nobuo Uematsu phoned in the battle themes. Overall the soundtrack is decent but kind of forgettable.

Final Fantasy VIII is an absolute bummer of an FF game. The gameplay is nerfed in that it was obviously trying to bring in new gamers, but the developers forgot about their fans. The storyline is one of the worst in the series (I’ll never get over that one twist, and no, I don’t hate school days based anime). I felt like I was not the target for this release, and that everyone was a greenhorn that made it. Final Fantasy VIII is one of the worst installments in the franchise.