| hotrodx said: Don't trust magazine reviews to help decide purchase. Ask someone you know who has played the game (one who bought the game without thinking of reviews). Many years ago, reviewers have given FF8 a very high score. But now it's almost universally hated (the emo cast of characters, the "Draw" thing). Good games stand the test of time. So 8.5 might be "low" but it's better than getting a 9.5 or 10 and then it gets hated 5 years from now (I'm looking at you FF8). Also, some games that get low scores may end up good for you. I played Shining Force EXA for the PS2, and I enjoyed it. Ditto for Trauma Center for the Wii (I really loved the game, which ironically doesn't have motion control in it). |
Squall's emo bit can be a bit anoying but the draw thing was actually a plus for me in FF8. The big thing I didn't like was that enemies were scaled to the average of your parties level. This was alright for early in the game but it discouraged you to explore and stuff because you were only going to make bosses later in the game that much harder to beat by giving them a lot more life because you had more life. So your options were try to beat game with low level and be wiped out by one strong blow or level up and hope you can take down the hundreds of thousands of hp that the bosses had.
edit: Yeah, 8.5 was lower than I was expecting for this game, if it really is ~20 hours long for the story and "hundreds of sidequests" that should automatically start the score at a 9.0 because of the shear amount of stuff they were able to put into a psp game with great graphics still. Anyways, going to get the special shiny version from best buy the day it comes out or shortly after.
