Final Fantasy VIII turns 20 today!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

On February 11th, 1999, my favourite video game of all time, Final Fantasy VIII, was released in Japan. It had everything I was looking for in a game and to this day, it remains a major influence in my work and a source of inspiration. Let us celebrate with some music:

[chrom]

[Legion]

Probably my favourite game ever. Certainly my favourite FF game.

[zrowsdower]

I always felt mixed about this game. The theme of love really bothered me along with the story overall. But I have been thinking of giving it another shot.

[The Tank]

Few times have I been more angry than seeing that Square is porting basically every Final Fantasy game to Switch except this one.

I understand why people don't like it, but it is still my favorite in the franchise.

[Deleted]

A shame that Square has treated the game poorly recently. A mediocre port to Steam which they refuse to fix slight problems and getting skipped over when it comes to Switch and Xbox One ports isn't helping it's already-mixed reputation.

VIII deserves better, but it's not gonna happen.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Even Wikipedia is celebrating!

[A Platypus Rave]

I really dislike this game, it's not my least favorite of the series (hey 13). the Story was alright and they hadn't gone full off the rails yet....

but the magic and junction system was a chore, and the fact that you can go the whole game without really paying attention to it... only to get screwed on the final boss.

I also disliked the find hidden magazines and parts to upgrade your weapon... doubley so because again you could easily miss them and not realize you need them because your summons do like 10x the damage of everything else.

[Fundertaker]

"That's none of your..."

Everyone else: "BUSINESS~!"

[Tenshigure]

Fun fact: VIII was the base influence my friends and I used when we got the first ruleset draft for D&D 3.0 back in the summer of '99. Our characters started out as graduates of a similar SeeD school, with a rival team (secondaries we made for fun) providing both a good motivator to proceed story as well as a foil for some of our more interesting escapades. One of my favorite sessions was when we did a re-enactment of the school dance, complete with a dance battle with the aforementioned rivals (DEX checks for all!).

Still one of the more underappreciated FF titles for sure due to how different it was (the Drawing system was a nightmare at first), but much like every other FF mechanic that got abandoned far too early, once it "clicked" it was fun as hell.

[Push R Truth]

Nothing beats Zell running around the entire world mid-fight just to throw a punch

[chrom]

A shame VIII is treated as the redheaded stepchild of the franchise.

[nonrev]

...Whatever.

[Mozenrath]

I shift around on what my favorite FF game is, but, gun to my head, it usually swings around to 8 or maybe 6.

I really do hope it gets a proper remaster one of these days. I hope it's not an issue with rights to "Eyes on Me", though that'd be the most Square Enix thing ever if it was.

[Sponsored by Groose Wipes]

The weird thing I found with FF8 from my experience was you either loved it or despised it, there's no in between. I don't think it's bad but I would put 7 and 9 over it easily.

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

I had mixed feelings on it back when I was a kid, but I’ve grown to appreciate VIII over the years. It probably has one of my favorite stories in the series and I admire the more mature direction it took in terms of visuals/design. I also clowned on junctioning at first but I started having fun with it eventually.

[Derk!]

A game with so much potential ruined by the downright unplayable junction system.

Loved the soundtrack, though.

[Deleted]

Honestly I find it really odd how much it and 9 have kind of swapped roles over the years. Before Squall was kind of the secondary mascot next to Cloud and 8 seemed to get a lot of praise in certain circles while 9 was seen as this weird other thing no one really cared about and now... While 9 isn't exactly heavily pushed it's still readily available and fans seem a lot more favorable to it while 8's kind of faded off into obscurity other than some degree of Squall still being somewhat prominent in crossovers.

Although I think the most telling sign of, "Square has completely ceased caring about this game," is that they haven't done a port of the 13 trilogy to the PS4 / One. It'd take virtually no effort, could probably be farmed out, and if you sold it as a bundle it'd be a pretty solid way to make some money back off of how Lighting Returns was pretty much a flop but nope, no indication they're planning on doing that.

[Deleted]

I loved VIII the first time I played it, hated it the next time. It's been a while since I've played it, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy:


What I remember enjoying:
-Doomtrain is one of the best summons a FF game has had. The only I can think of that I preferred was Ark in IX.
-Squall is a great main character, despite being an angsty shithead at times. His development over the game is great and I think his romance with Rinoa is one of the best ones that a FF game has had
-Ragnarok is a badass airship and the story sequence with Squall and Rinoa when you go to rescue her is so good.
-Triple Triad was my shit back in the day. I spent so many hours on that.
-Keeping up with the modern look to the series that had kind of started with VI, but had been really developed in VII.
-Man with the Machine Gun is an awesome battle theme. And speaking of Laguna, I liked his subplot quite a bit.



What I didn't like:
-The junction system. An interesting idea, and one that can lead you to be overpowered if you do it right, but also because of your stats being tied to your magic pool you are discouraged from using magic.
-Time kompression. If you want to dump someone into the final dungeon and have that be a point of no return, fine, but don't make an entire disc with half of the areas on the map blocked off completely.
-All the nonsense involving the orphanage and memory loss. The overall story started getting kind of stupid at that point.

[BorneAgain]

Feb 12, 2019 3:53:13 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

Honestly I find it really odd how much it and 9 have kind of swapped roles over the years. Before Squall was kind of the secondary mascot next to Cloud and 8 seemed to get a lot of praise in certain circles while 9 was seen as this weird other thing no one really cared about and now... While 9 isn't exactly heavily pushed it's still readily available and fans seem a lot more favorable to it while 8's kind of faded off into obscurity other than some degree of Squall still being somewhat prominent in crossovers.

I think VIII's been hurt by VII casting such a big shadow that the former's similarities to it in aesthetics and design mean it doesn't stand out as much or gets unfairly compared. IX by contrast is clearly doing its own thing, and is more of a continuation of the older titles so comparisons to VII aren't as common. Not to mention the caricatured characters have allowed it to age fairly well and its own flaws quickly got overshadowed by the many arguments about the divisive games that followed (X-XV).