Why does everyone hate FF VIII?

[Diomedes1976]

For me FFVIII is one of the best ones.

I have played nearly all the FF.

FFI-II are very primitive games.Maybe for their time they were something ,I dont know ,but right now they are totally dated even with the ports they got.The dialogues ,building up potential ,side quests etc all is very limited.They were the debut of something great ,but not great in themselves.

FFIII ,never played it.

FFIV-VI.I didnt like IV enough to finish it,V and VI I played until the end.Magnificent games.For that era the graphics and music were top notch.Story is very good too.The cast was also quite good but far from being a standout.The dialogues were still very schematic,with lots of eyes droppings and "......" lines to express emotion.Still ,magnific games.One thing ,though ....I dont understand how so many people put Kefka as the main villian in the series.He is just a somewhat ridiculous green sprite that jumps around laughing "Ha ha ha ha".He gets some powers and hes really evil later on but its always a basic evil ,some childish idea of what evil is.Side quests etc are still on the thin side.

Final Fantasy VII is a true epic.The graphics are dated now but the ensemble was a graphical masterpiece then.The music is fantastic,dozens of fantastic themes.The materia system is very easy and scalable.The summonings were pretty impressive too.The story was magnific,and the cast very good....Vincent ,Tifa ,Aeris ,Cloud ,Sephirot ,Cid ...a good ensenmble.The side quests and building up power system is absolutely stellar.Growing your chocobos to run in the Gold Saucer was a game in itself.The Arena in the Gold Saucer was pretty though too.Growing the power to face the Ultimate Weapons require some serious time.

Now with FFVIII.If someone considers this as a let down it may be only comparing this directly with FFVII.But FFVIII had its own soul and I enjoyed it nearly the same as FFVII.The graphics were truly fantastic for a PS1 game and the best of the 32bit era for an RPG.The music was also fantastic.The cast was quite good...I liked a lot Squall ,Rinoa ,Zell ,Selphie and Irivine.The art design was top notch all throughout the game.The game was lenghty ,had a good amount of side quest.Not to forget about the card battle system ,a game in itself and very addictive and complez ...getting the complete collection was very though and the possibility to transform the cards into items with alchemy was great.The battle system I have to say is maybe the series best one.For sure the junction system didnt let you use magic like mad because you still needed it to power your stats ,but that was part of the strategy and made it special.The Limit breaks were awesome ,and there were tons of unlockable Invocations.The Invocations having their life bar was also a good touch.Finding the ultimate weapon for all the charachters was very hard.All in all a magnific game,maybe not up with FFVII but not very far behind.It lacked a bit the FFVII soul but the artistic ,playable and production values were top notch.

FFIX.Good game.The graphics improved little over FFVIII but played in progressive scan it sure looked nearly impossible on the PS1.The cast was different enough with the job systems.The baddies were a bit bland ,the localizations were beautiful but quite generic.There were quite a good amount of side quests.The game was very easy though,and the final baddie a definite dissappointement as you dont hear about him until some minutes before clearing the game.The optimistic ending makes the game lose nearly all of the emotional force of the game.Yitan isnt what I call a good protagonist.

FFX.Magnific.Still looking like one of the best PS2 games.The crew was fantastic (Kimahri ,Auron ,Tidus ,everybody ),the art design truly magnificent.The battle system was very deep and added the possibility of swapping charachters in the middle of a battle.Controlling directly the invocations was great too.The spheres builidng system was very good too.The music I absolutely love it there are dozens of memorable pieces.The story was really awesome I loved it to bits.And the ending was memorable too.A bit linear in its story but had literally tons of side quests and addittional challenges once you reached some point.Getting powerful enough to challenge the Dark Eons was really really though and time consuming.

FFX-2.Didnt play this.

FFXI.The online one ,it isnt a real FF so wont speak about it.

FFXII.The first real 3D FF game.Graphically it pushes the PS2 to the limit.It has about the same graphic level as FFX but this time in real 3D.The music is also magnific.The crew I dont like it just the same but some ones as Balthier are definitely awesome.The battle system I like it and allows for lot of customization but liked better the turn based system of the prior games.Still playing it so cant say anything about the ending.A great game but for what I have seen not between the 3 better FF.