Why does everyone hate FF VIII?

[Words Of Wisdom]

ChichiriMuyo said:
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.  Catscratch isn't "halfway through the game," it's right at the beginning and available pretty much right after getting Gau.  You can ride that rage all the way till the end and with the right items it only gets better and better.  4x damage?  Yes please.  8x damage?  Yes please!  8x damage to every enemy on screen?  Woo hoo!  Final Attack I only mentioned because it's the "I win no matter what" button of Final Fantasy VII.

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.  You still have no idea what you're talking about.  99% of all enemies in the game can be beaten by GF summoning and nothing else as a level 99 party.  That's not complex, that's stupidly simple.  In fact, GF summoning is only useful if they're really high leveled.  You need to resort to other tactics at lower levels.  Limit Break abuse is feasible at pretty much all levels though.

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!"  As opposed to...?  IMO amnesia stories are always pretty lame no matter how you spin it.  It's just a matter of how least pathetic they can be made.

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.  Erm... Edea was a villain for a good portion of it.  She was great for those parts.  The part where she summons the icicle to strike Squall is probably one of the most memorable scenes in that entire game.

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.  I liked the "enemies level up as you do" part.  I hate grinding with a passion.  In Final Fantasy VIII, the developers finally said... let's make the game workable at any level.  If the player wants to spend time getting tons of abilities, make enemies stronger.  If the player just wants to go through the story without focusing on the combat, let's make enemies weaker.  As someone who did both a level 99 playthrough and a low-level playthrough, I can safely say both are very doable.

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...  That's my number one complaint with the system.  The game heavily rewards junctioning magic and, with the exception of few spells, never rewards casting it.  The magic that is really useful is the kind you least want to cast. 

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.  FF7's cast was a static group of walking cliches with almost zero real character motivation.  Comment on FF8's cast all you like, but don't hold FF7's cast up as being superior at all.  They weren't.  FF8 had Laguna, Raine, and arguably a couple more.  FF7 arguably had Sephiroth and that's it.

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.

The rest of it is opinion for the most part, but the music comment bugs me because FF8 has some great music.  It wasn't a complete soundtrack of awesome like you'd find in Chrono Trigger but it was not bad at all.

Just to point out a few...

The Man with the Machine Gun.  This is Laguna's battle theme and quite possibly one of the very best battle themes of the entire Final Fantasy franchise.  

 

 

 

The Landing.  This song was utterly perfect for the scenes you heard it played in.  

 

 

 

Love Grows.  This is essentially an orchestrated/instrumental version of Eyes on Me.  It is exceptionally well composed and very poignant.  FF7 can only come close to this one with Aeris' theme and maybe Great Warrior (though I'm not fond of its instrument choices).