If playing the most logical way is not the right way to play a game, then unfortunately, you can't very well call it a good game; not by any sort of mainstream standard, anyway. It may well be a deep game, or even an engrossing one, but not a good one. Good games are intuitive: you can pick up the controller and figure out how to play properly within minutes, and won't be punished for taking the most obvious course of action. That was one of FF8's key flaws too, actually: doing what you'd expect (ie. leveling up and killing everything in sight) got you punished with enemies that were too strong.
So I guess it was the counter-intuitiveness of the system that got to me most, then. Doing what made sense with an RPG didn't work. And as I said, that was what made all of the other relatively minor flaws seem far more exaggerated than they really were. All of those niggling issues with the plot, the environments, etc. that I listed were only irritating because it felt to me like the game didn't want me to succeed, didn't want me to play the game.
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
