I really did wonder why everyone depended on him. Replaying it recently made me see this. They ask him to do things they can easily do, make decisions they can make for themselves or ask him to do something even though both he and them know nothing about it (okay so it's part of the game but still).

To me the game wasn't about the ending. While it was a nice cinematic the ending was in the game play itself and the defeat of the final boss and the few remaining non FMV scenes after.

I didnt really understand how Squall developed that way, first he didnt give a toss what anyone thought, then he seem to never want to become a memory. i just dont think the story or the characters were well written imo. they developed irratically, and i felt it was too focuses on Squall and Rinoa, which didnt feel genuine and felt forced to me. imo FF8 has not aged well. the true villain had very little screen time and in turn i had no real great empathy towards anything that really happened. i think some things were good, but the characters and story were very poor imho. Laguna's group did provide some comic relief, but he never felt like a great main character anyway.

the ending, the ending was just so perfect. i cried =P

and laguna is like one of the best ff characters of all time, so much inner dialogue just like Squall. i loved all those thoughts overlapping. i wonder how that would even be acomplished if it was voiced.

oh Squall, what does it meanwhen I like your KHs and Dissidia versions better than your actual game??? Selphie and that martial arts guy are my fav FF8 characters

I still like it. The pacing could be improved, but it's not as though the other FF games on the PS1 were much better.

I would say if it is ever remade, the junction system should be more intuitive, something like you shouldn't need 75% of the GFs just to make sure every stat on every character has a junction, and changes like that.

Also, yes, I think Quistis is hot. I've never found an exhale to be as sexy as in her introduction FMV.

"Selphie and that martial arts guy are my fav FF8 characters"

Didn't mind Selphie, but I didn't like Spazzy McShutthehellup.

Absolutely loved this game too. Unfortunately I compare all games I play to it all the time and nothing measures up. I loved the simplicity of the battles and the complexity of the story. Loved Junction, water damage or fire damage and it actually showed up graphically in-battle. Anyways sorry about the rant, but you aren't alone. This game was my all-time favourite game.

I don't like the junction system, or the ending. But, I do like the last boss fight.

I'm thinking how many people bad-mouth this post in the next few hours?

Story did it for me. As a matter of fact, story can either make or break an RPG for me. I can play an RPG as long as it has some exploration, but it has to have a good story for it to reach my all time fav list. FF8 started off as a simple teenage rivalry. Then you became a seed, kidnap the President, then the sorcerer. The story just kept bringing me back.

I knew I loved the game the moment I had my first Laguna dream, and the rest is simply history. God I miss Soft.

I was so fascinated by the gunblade I used to doodle Seifer and Squall's blades in my notebooks during school.

I'm happy to see a thread with the word nostalgia in the same sentence as Final Fantasy VIII. Because I thought I was the only one who had some sort of nostalgic connection to FF8.

Final Fantasy VIII wasn't my first jrpg. But I had limited exposure to jrpgs before playing it. My first jrpg ever was Dragon Warrior (Quest) II in 1993 for the NES. I hated that game then. It wasn't until 1998 when I had played Diablo (PC) and a bit of Pokemon Red/Blue (Gameboy) that I sort of "got" the RPG thing and had a greater understanding of the mechanics that I started to appreciate that game. Also in 1993 I had played The Magic of Scheherazade, which was like half-turn based jrpg, half-Zelda. I enjoyed that more than DQII, though once again I really didn't fully get the mechanics behind it to truly appreciate it. And only reason why I invested so much time in it is because I didn't really have much else to play at the time to be honest.

I didn't have a SNES growing up and I didn't grow up with the RPGs on the Genesis either. Back in the early 90s I was aware of the name "Final Fantasy". And I was well aware of Final Fantasy VII but I didn't really give FF7 much thought right away when I first got the PS1. I went straight to the sports games first (hey I was a Genesis gamer) and Metal Gear Solid (I played the original Metal Gear on the NES back in the day actually but I was truly blown away by the cinematic-esque cutscenes of MGS at the time). And I had never played the Final Fantasies growing up in the 8-bit and 16-bit days.

So when I had played FF8, it was like a very new experience to me. I had a bit of familiarity with rpgs but I had never played a story-heavy rpg before (I did come off playing Metal Gear Solid though, another story-heavy game). And the story in FF8 really resonated with me at the time. I could really relate to Squall's character and the whole love story theme was nice (lots of FF7 fans hated it). The gameplay was nothing all that great. But I had this motivation to keep playing because I wanted to uncover more of the story. It was a really fun ride then. 

I have fond memories of the enjoyment that FF8 brought me. Though if I were to replay this game 11 years later, I don't know if I'd really truly appreciate it the way I did then. If I want a solid story, I don't need to suffer through boring gameplay for it. I can just play a visual novel (to be honest, I think this genre has ruined a large portion of the jrpg genre for me. Visual novels do the story thing better than jrpgs while being a lot less tedious in many cases), watch anime/tv/movies, read manga or a novel (not much of a novel reader though I have to admit) and get an experience that is superior to FF8 or Metal Gear Solid was for me. But because that level of story telling in video games was a novelty for me at the time, it was something truly special to me then.

As for FF7 and the older FFs, FF7 was my second so I don't really have the nostalgic connection to it than I do FF8. And while FF4 and FF6 had that story-heavy focus as well and I had enjoyed wasting my time then with those games (lol), I played those in 2000/2001, not in the 16-bit heyday. As for FF13, honestly I tuned out. The story bored me. The gameplay I liked.