Nostalgia time: Final Fantasy VIII

[Runa216]

Why so much hate for this game?  I read through a large majority of the posts in this thread and almost every one of the gripes can be summed up with "B'awww, this is different, therefore it is so bad it makes me retch." I understand not everyone will like the change in tone from VII (seriously, Emo teens don't work well for machismo americans, we all know this), but it doesn't mean it's a bad game.  Not everyone likes the junction system and I get that, but people need to understand the difference between subjective opinion and objective assessment.  The game was phenomenal, with a deep backstory, well developed characters, a well realized world, a great plot centralized around politics, war, and love (pretty universal themes), and some of the best animation and graphics we'd seen up to that point. while I understand there were some things that wouldn't click with everyone, I wish people would understand that doesn't mean it's a bad game.  

Now Final Fantasy XIII was a BAD game.  I wanted to like it, I tried, but the fact was that the plot was remarkably one-dimensional, the characters forgettable without an inch of depth, the battle system was broken to the point of frustration, the graphics were only good if you had a super high definition TV (seriously, SDTV's blurred 90% of t he words to the point of not being able to read them), the audio was about as cookie cutter as it gets, and compared to other FF games, it was a complete failure as far as content is concerned.  No side quests, no mini games, no character customization options, no hidden characters, absolutely no explorative content (Gran Pulse doesn't count, even that was remarkably linear.)  if you're going to hate a game, hate it for the right reasons.  Hate it because it's broken or poorly done, not becuase it's not to your taste.