As of this writing, I still haven't beaten the final boss of FFVIII. This boss has *5* different forms, and I have gotten pretty far in the fight, but ultimately lost. When that happens, I really lose morale, and I don't want to play again.
I'm not sure if I will finish the game. Honestly, I'm tempted to start all over again. This time I will reference the guide regularly. Disc 4 gave me a bunch of time to grind levels and abilities, and I was able to get a better idea of how to strategically build the characters. It would be nice to do that from the beginning and it would also be nice not to overlook any Guardian Forces along the way. This game is incredibly deep, and I don't need to 100% the thing, but I would like to do better than I did this time.
Let's break FFVIII down a bit:
Visuals:
The Guardian Force summon spells look really good, especially when compared with the previous game in the series. The same goes for the Full Motion Video scenes: compared to FFVII, they look incredible. They are also generally implemented better, I would say-they don't feel like FMV for the sake of FMV.
Creature design is standard for a Final Fantasy game, which is to say: pretty great. In particular, the final form of the final boss is a pretty wild design. I'm a fan of how bizarre Final Fantasy monsters can get. (FFXIII was another game with great monster design)
Visual design of the towns and other instances is also fits the high quality standard of the Final Fantasy Series. I find the PSX pre-rendered backgrounds to be very immersive, and I really enjoy them.
That being said, the overworld map is pretty uninspiring, with a lot of filler. In general, I found the PSX Final Fantasy games to have pretty uninteresting overworlds, but I think it is the case even more so.
Story:
I can't honestly say I like the story. I enjoyed the first disc, when the world was being laid out, characters and motivations introduced. It was a suberb first disc. However, the second and third discs really didn't do much for me. The action moved very quickly and the plot got convoluted, and I just didn't connect with the characters as much. I would be interested to see a re-translation or complete revision of this story to see if I'm missing something.
Gameplay:
This is the place that FFVIII really shines. I love the Junction system of this game, it makes grinding very satisfying. It's pretty complicated, and any player would benefit from checking in with a guide during play. The gist of it is that you equip a Guardian Force (the first three are Shiva, Quetzacoatl and Ifrit). Guardian Forces level along with the player, and they master abilities that the player can then use. These abilities are both passive and active abilities. Passive abilities are bolstered by junctioning magic to various statistics: Strength, Magic, Elemental Attack/Defense. A lot of the time is spent consolidating spells to different characters in order to bolster their stats. It's a lot of work, and I think the interface could use an update, but I got a lot of satisfaction from this part of the game. Unfortunately I didn't really fully understand it until consulting a guide at the end of Disc 3. It is tempting to start a new game, with all of my new systems knowledge.
Overall, Final Fantasy VIII is a mixed bag, and I can see why it's not one of the more popular games in the franchise. It seems clear to me that the game grows with repeated playing, and benefits greatly from a guide. This can be seen as a fundamental failure of the game, and maybe it is. But there is a lot of cool gameplay available to anyone willing to do some homework. And I would advise any player to reference a guide when playing this game-- even for the first time-- it would be very helpful and enriching of your gameplay experience.
-D
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