This is the one question I ask myself yearly. Final Fantasy VIII is my second most favouritest game ever, that said I came to the conclusion that people can't figure out the game's stat system and strategy that's based off it, nor can they understand/appreciate the story. If you can't relate to Squall then the story will be horrible. If you can't understand the junction system, you're just gonna be running through some very long summons. Some common complaints:
"Junction system sucks".
The irony of that is people will complain that Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2 are dumbed down because they don't let you change each individual stat, yet here Final Fantasy 8 comes along letting you change every stat (albeit after leveling up your GF) and it gets slammed for it. Your elemental defense you can set, your elemental attack you can set, your HP you can set, your luck you can set, you can junction HP+80%, Str +20%, etc. The flaw though is all of this has to be done through leveling up your GFs, learning their refine abilities and refining the str+60% and the vit + 60%s etc and you have to grab all your magics and refine them higher, which brings us to the next complaint.
"Drawing Magic sucks"
Yes I agree, though I do enjoy drawing personally (but I understand the pain in the ass it can be),so refine your cards and the items you grab from enemies. Go kill some Fastitocalons and you'll get 100 waters for everyone, within 20 minutes of the game. Go play some cards you'll have 100 Blizzagas to junction in no time. Or refine your fire to firas. Junction Quetzacotl to Quistis and junction those 100 waters to her magic and have her draw practically alone and she'll draw the cap of 9 a draw and move magic to other people.
The last complaint I'm gonna touch on about in regards to the game's stat system (Cause I have to go to work now) is its enemy system.
"Enemies level up with you"
Yes they do, that's a good thing. Level is meaningless when you can manipulate your stats. Low level, high stats is the game's strategy and makes you horribly broken. And should you decide to level up, use those HP+ and Str+, you'll have disgusting stats by the time you hit 100.
Final Fantasy VIII's system is very complex, but it's probably the best in the series (Not combat though, that goes to X, but that's an argument for another day) because of its level of customization. Can it be better? Yes there's a lot of things that can be improved, but as is; it's still top notch.
