I wouldn't say I hate Final Fantasy VIII - The story for it just came off as a little bit weak.
For one, they fudged having to write any kind of character backstories - we all grew up in the same orphanage, but nobody remembers it, yay - this is so convienient. Let's blame it on the GFs but never elaborate on it again for the rest of the game!
Second, Personally, I thought it was kind of cheap to try and re-capture the drama of haning Aeris die in Final Fantasy VII but having Squall getting speared through the chest at the end of disk 1 - only to completely forget it ever happened at the beginning of disk 2.
I guess that sums it up with the fact that I felt that the reason VIII was weaker than the others was because of story cop-outs.
The battle system and overall game system was great - though ridiculously easy to cheat.
