WoW, like I said, I like to have uber characters but it's ridiculous to have them before disc one is more than 2/3 complete. I was really no more than 15% of the way through the game and I could have done basically everything up through disc 3 with the characters I had. Final Attack alone takes more time and effort to get than building up the uber characters I had in FF8, and you cannot accomplish that task until much, much later in the game. I'd say that is VERY different.
You're right, the final boss isn't very hard, even at 99. The problem is that you think your skills are compareable to everyone's skills. All that I said was that a number of people would have found it pretty much impossible because the system is geared to punish them for doing what RPG players do naturally. That's bad gameplay.
Laguna is the best character in FF8. I like Laguna a lot. The problem is that he's basically the only character that gets serious character development. Pretty much everyone else can't even remember that they knew eachother as children. FF7 on the other hand has background sub-plots for the majority of the characters. I wasn't a big fan of Red XIII, Barret, or Cid, but the side-stories for each of them helped me get attached. FF8 lacked that completely, and the only way Square had to cover up their sheer laziness was "oh, the GFs replace their memories!"
No, the story wasn't okay. There wasn't a single thing about the story that screamed "keep playing to find out what happens," other than Laguna's scenes. The more I played the game, the less I cared about what they were doing or why. The character interactions were tepid, so there was pretty much nothing to drive the story other than "**** has happened, do something about it."
Edea would have made a great villain. It's just that she never really was one. Like I said, most of the people who could be considered to be your nemesis in that game turn out to have just been controlled by others. It leaves you with pity for them, not hatred. I want someone like Kefka or Sephiroth who willfully coes around slaughtering innocents and doing other things that make it enjoyable to finally put them down. And those two stayed the villain of their games the whole way through, which made it that much more exciting when you did get to take them down.
No, it didn't play well. For a game to play well it has to not punish players for doing what comes naturally. If you play an RPG, you are almost guarenteed to get stronger for killing more enemies than necessary. In FF8, you get weaker. And I don't just mean the fact that enemies level up with you, but also because you lose the opportunity to gain all of the stat bonuses that the GFs won't have available until relatively late in the game. Really, would you want to play a sports game where scoring a goal gave your opponents points? Would you want to play a fighting game where hitting the opponent gives them an advantage, or an FPS where you're not supposed to kill things? Usually in an RPG if I make it to the end with characters below level 30 it means I am trying to challenge myself. In FF8 it means I was trying to make it easier.
Oh, adn thanks for bringing up magic. Not only is it not any good in battle, it hurts you to use it. And using the overpowered, drawn out GFs not only doesn't hurt you, but it's better for you. The more you spam them, the better they get. Why is the game so backwards? It punished you for gaining exp, it punishes you for using spells, it rewards you for using the most powerful attackes you have as often as possible...
And the story was tripe. Almost all of the characters fail to stand out, which is something FF7 didn't have a problem with. I know a lot of people think if the order of the two being released were reversed people's sentiments towards them would be as well, but I think the truth is neither game would have ended up as well-loved as they are now. FF7's characters gave people a reason to care, even if it was a shallow reason, and they also had interesting looks to them. FF8's characters are bland in appearance and personality. Only Laguna and Squall really shine through. The first because someone actually gave him a story, and the second because you're forced to play as him for 95% of the game.
Basically, if not for Laguna I'd have a hard time finidng any redeeming value in the game at all. The music was alright, but the Seiken Densetsu and Chrono games have always made FF's music look pale. The graphics were quite nice for an RPG of the day, but then they hardly gave you anything worth looking at. The system was backwards, too easily broken, and punished players for doing what comes natural to most RPGers. The characters mostly sucked, and didn't give me even the slightest reason to care about the story which was weak to begin with. There was no glue to hold the thing togather, and the people who really like it have probably not experienced the many, many alternatives that are startlingly better.
Really, FF8 was mediocrity incarnate. It wasn't wholly bad, but there's also no reason to play it when you could do something else.
Oh, and EVERYTHING in WFR can be described in the exact same way you described that one scene. Really, the torture scenes were the only ones that actually did seem to have any place in that whole book. It was to remind you that stupid people, like Richard, would eventually get what was coming to them, even if blind luck would get them out of it. Really, it was the sole payoff for a book that was a bit torturous to read.
You do not have the right to never be offended.
