Why does everyone hate FF VIII?

[Gnizmo]

Words Of Wisdom said:

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.

 

The early parts of the game Gau is in and out a lot and you can't always rely on having him there to take the win. You also have to know where to get cat scratch or even know how powerful it is and why you would want it. This is also only for one character rather than your entire cast which changes the relative power. A better example would be my personal favorite of Gold Hairpin/Gembox (or was it a different item that gave 1mp spells?) combined with Quick. Once the character started casting they never had to stop. The monsters never get to return fire so you win without even having a battle. This still requires that you know this combination exists. With FF8 they push you to break the system at everyturn rather than put the items you need in some remote spot of the game.

In Final Fantasy 6, you could use the Vanish/Doom combo to not only kill most enemies in the game but to kill most bosses in the game.  If you think killing regular enemies is with death stuff in FF8 was cheap, how about killing bosses with it in FF6?

I actually don't remember that particular trick working on bosses, nor do I recall when in the game you get the espers to pull it off. I will poke around to see where I stand on it, but I only recall one boss having the super cheesy one-shot death.

And the game being too easy is still a valid complaint. Occasionally in FFs you will get a fairly hard fight you have to sit and think how to beat. FF8 never has that, and they do have 2 secret bosses that are supposed to be hard. The games are supposed to occasionally challenge you, but FF8 never could. Still that is just one of my many complaints about FF8 as I detailed earlier.