Final Fantasy VIII

[Vinny Valentine]

i thought the game caught a bad rap, just because it followed 7. its not ff8's fault ff7 was better. it was great, it just wasn't MINDBLOWING

[Jonbrawnanvil]

Hmm, where to begin. Final Fantasy 8 was definately not my first final fantasy game played but it was the first one that I felt that I really loved. As mentioned by many people, the music was absolutely stunning. It was the first FF soundtrack that I bought and I love listening to it regularely. The graphics were an amazing leap from Final fantasy 7's, without a doubt if you were a person that related to games by their graphics Final Fantasy 8 blew everything out of the water at the time. I really enjoyed the FMV's which were crisp and beautiful, both in their animation and environment, though I did notice a few mistakes in them. I think one of the funniest clips that stands out to me is when you are [Spoiler] about to assassinate Ultimecia[/Spoiler] and the parade float is going AWAY from you but when Irvine shoots the bullet comes at her from the front. So funny.
ANYway, I enjoyed the battle system. I loved that monsters leveled up with you...mainly because I would grind in the training center at the beginning of the game and get a decent amount of exp from the monsters when I killed them instead of having a piddly amount all the time. I also loved the boost ability that you could give to the GF's. It made the difference sometimes in whether or not you would be winning or losing a battle...provided you were using your GF's in the battle. I also fell absolutely in love with the junctioning system. Being able to customize your characters stats and their offences and defenses was so awesome. I hated the draw system...if I had to pick a flaw in the game it would be the drawing. It was just too time consuming, though if you were on a high enough level you could get some rocking magics from some of the enemies. Also I never bothered to stock every character with magic unless I had surpluss amounts. I just filled three characters with all of the best magics available and then swapped the magic and gf's back and forth between the characters. I found that this worked the best for me and seriously reduced the amount of time required in drawing and refining magic. I would say the only frustrating thing was that you would get to certain parts in the game and it would just unjunction you for no apparent reason. I was like "what the hell? Where did all my stuff go?" and then I'd have to re-junction it all. I got to the point where I just wrote out what my best combination was so that I could put it back on without a hassle. Also the ability to customize what your GF's had as abilities was an ingenious move in adding an unforseen element to the engineering of your characters. I always made sure that I had every stat, elemental attack and defense, and status attack and defense available for junction on the 3 characters that I used. So Whooped everything.
Triple Triad is by far my favorite minigame to play in any RPG aside from Blitzball in FFX. I have no idea what kind of drugs they were on when they made tetra elemental for FF9 but triple triad was where it was at. It annoyed the crap out of me when I would have rules on that I didn't want but aside from that I loved to spend time playing triple triad...not to mention that the song "Shuffle or Boogie" just made you feel like you were sitting at a table opposite someone laying down cards in a match.
The storyline, hmm, I don't have any complaints about the storyline except that they didn't really explain time compression very well and I hated that once time compression occured you couldn't go into towns anymore. That blew chunks. I also would have loved for them to explain more about Sorceress Ultimecia...I have read a few theories on what people have speculated about her and who she might be and why she hates SeeD so much. But yeah, I'm a hopeless romantic so a storyline that centered around a love story grabbed me. I do wish that there had been more development of the other characters other than just Squall and Rinoa, though I loved them enough that I didn't see any problem with it to begin with. I thought it was awesome the way the pig tailed librarian girl obviously had a crush on Zell and I wish that they had developed that more. For those of you who are interested in a fanfiction about just that I sincerely recommend checking out .:: The Mintfield v6 -=- Out to Pasture ::. her works are beyond amazing.
Probably one of the other awesome things about this game was that I got the stategy guide for it and I was absolutely blown away by the detail in it. It made it a lot easier to figure out where to get the things I wanted. I bought the guide for 9 thinking it would be the same and was severely disappointed because the writer copped out on all the details and you had to use playonline.com to find any and all information that wasn't like right out of the game.
Well I think that about covers my book on final fantasy 8. Oh except I want to put in my two cents about the whole 7 is better than 8 thing. My brother is a 7 fanatic and i'm the 8 fanatic so we often had disputes about which was better. I never understood how everyone got so "involved" with Final fantasy 7 but didn't like 8. I guess it has been pointed out that depending on your personality you will either love it or hate it because of the areas that it addresses and relates to in people. But I also think that a lot of it does have to do with the impact that 7 had on the gaming market. It was the first release of a final fantasy on the then next gen system and so everyone raved about it. But It seems like everyone decided that 8 was bad simply because it got released after 7. It really P****d me off and still does. Everyone touts Final Fantasy 7 like it was the best thing since TP but no one can give me a good reason as to why. Anyway I'll stop my Ranting.
GO FINAL FANTASY VIII!!!!! Zell Dincht Needed Ridalin But Was Still So Awesome!!!

Oh hey, I almost didn't address the limit breaks in 8. I loved em...especially the multiple hit attacks. I also loved using aura to make it so that you could use a limit break even when you were in good health. Yup...loved em...
Toodles