Why does everyone hate FF8?

[ShadowSoldier]

Scoobes said:
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?".

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?