The game was good, I completed it twice and greatly enjoyed it when I played it all those years ago. The card game was also lots of fun and a great way to get magic and items. It had its fair share of problems though:

Junction system: Main complaint really. I thought it was a brilliant system at first. You could customise every single stat making it very powerful and allowing you complete control of all the characters. Unfortunately, this also broke the game, especially at the later stages. It essentially made the game too easy as junctioning Curaga to HP and Ultima to Strength completely overpowered your characters. I could defeat all the optional bosses with ease. It also meant that magic use was redundant as you were constantly saving it for stat boosts. It was a potentially brilliant system, but it didn't feel like the game was built around it as it should have been.

Story: Brilliant in places, horribly convoluted in others. I thought the way the story branched between Laguna and Squall was well executed, but towards the end (mainly disc 3 onwards) it become a bit too convoluted and disjointed. Also, GFs make people forget things? WTF?

Characters: Squall was annoying at the start with little to no explaination as to why he's like that compared to the others. The relationship between Squall and Rinoa felt horribly forced and over the top by the end. The final boss as well felt a bit "Who's this? Why do I care?".

Did you not find it made the game too easy though? As soon as I figured out how the system worked, I breezed through the rest of the game. Stock up as much magic as possible and junction it to the desired stats. The game didn't feel like it was truly built around this system and didn't take advantage of it as much as it could have.

I thought VIII was bad not because of junctioning, nor because the enemies level up with you, nor because of drawing magic.
It's much more simple than that: the story sucked and Squall was an annoying prick. That's pretty much all it takes.

Which is why the Rinoa is Ultemica theory getting debunked made me quite sad and brought down the games story to me. Ultimecia just came out of no where and I had to ask myself who the fuck is this? what's her motive and why should we care?

- I disliked most of the characters.
- I got annoyed with the Guardian forces and their cutscenes;
- Some moments in the game belong to the most boring game moments in the FF franchise.
-I disliked the T-REX.
- I disliked that I was at the end of the game and wanted to catch the other GF's to find out that I missed a lot of them, it pissed me of so much that whole the neighbourhood could hear me scream FUCK You at 2 A.M in the morning. My father was so furious that he gave me a beating and took my playstation away. Also had to go to my granddad for 4 days as punishment. Had to work for 12 hours a day and had to pray with him for another 4 hours a day. The last day I even got bitten by a snake and now I am still scared of snakes, probably the worst days of my life..(thank you FFVIII).


- FFVIII has some of the most awesome moments in the franchise, the attack on the Island, the train mission, balamb garden that got invaded (got goosebumps).
- I liked the atmosphere of the school.
- The music was amazing, same for the CGI.
-I enjoyed the Card game.
- I liked to beat the T-rex.

So you get beaten, have to work 12 hours a day and have to pray for 4 hours a day?

I would call the NSPCC if I were you.

Every point you made was completely true, I couldn't agree more.

As for the final boss, I think they should have added a lot more story to Disc 4 and let you roam around some more, that scary bitch Sorceress Adel should have been the final boss too.

I absolutely agree with you, that's why I absolutely love this game.  You know Squall starts off very stoic, doesn't want to get involved to much with people, then he slowly starts to change, slowly starts to appreciate people, learns to start relying on other, etcs.  It makes me sad that people can't appreciate the slow changes in Squall.  I mean they complain that he's emo (Which he's not), yet if he wasn't on that extreme at the begining,  he wouldn't be able to change nor develop as a character which is what character development is about.

But that's the trick isn't it?  The game was built around the system because the enemies level up with you (Though there are those enemies that have disgusting stats no matter what level they're at), like the strategy is low level high stats like I had said, it would make sense that the game would become easy once you figure out this strategy, it is after all the strategy.  Though, I believe the developers also took into consideration if you don't utilize the junction system.  Like it takes a lot of time to utilize the system prope;. you have to spend hours drawing magic, refining magic, refining items, settings items to the GFs, leveling them up, etc, so they took into consideration if you play the game at the bare minimum.

I can relate to that character, though I haven't got to the part in which I start to care for others. Maybe because I was way younger at the time, it made a big impression on me. Though I haven't finished the game in a true sense.