Final Fantasy VIII was probably one of the most disappointing gaming experiences of my life.

I followed the game like a hawk in gaming magazines when it was revealed. FF7 was by no means the best RPG ever but I had high hopes for FF8, and everything seemed like it would be right. But then after all those months of waiting and anticipating, and I finally got my hands on it.........what the hell was this shit?

One of the first things that turned me off was Squall Leonhart. God, does that guy suck ass. See, I can handle snarky bastards like Ryudo or Luke, I even like them. But Squall wasn't a snarky bastard, he was a pissy little teenager, with his cool-scar-that's-not-really-cool, his absurd weapon (thanks Nomura!), and a really bad attitude. If you didn't guess, I can't stand pissy teenagers. The rest of the androgynous cast didn't really help. No one cared about Zell, Selphie was a walking RPG stereotype, Irvine might as well have not even been there and Seifer just sucks. The only characters I even remotely liked were Quistis and Laguna. Quistis, I guess because she was one of the few character that didn't piss me off by just existing and Laguna because his personality wasn't complete ass. And then there was Rinoa. Oh god, Rinoa, what another annoying character. She threw herself at Squall constantly only to be denied with the flick of Squall's pretty hair and a "whatever." She was inches away from being choked until Squall went from denying her to not being able to live without her in the span of about 5 minutes. Character Development? What character development? It's more like random personality changes, but with the crappy plot twists who can really blame the character's for their clearly damaged psyches?

Final Fantasy isn't exactly the pinnacle of RPG battle systems, so I can't say I was expecting the Junction system to be this reinvention of the genre. I can't say I was expecting it to fall apart at the seams right from implementation either. The concept sounded good on paper, but couple with the nearly random, stupid Draw system and the only way you can really take advantage of the Junction system's customization being to gimp your party members when it came to using magic you wanted to use, leaving you to spam normal attacks, limits, and 10 minute summons instead. I guess even Square realized how bad it was since they haven't used it again.

The only passable aspects of the game were the graphics and the sound. FF8 is clearly above the lego levels of FF7, and the summons, though long, were entertaining to watch the first four or five times. The soundtrack was decent, I actually do remember a few songs, but "decent" doesn't mean much when the FF9 soundtrack comes along later and completely walks all over it.

I figured that after all the FF7 threads (and bashing), it was time to move on. Surely I can't be the only person repulsed by this game? I don't say this often about too many games, but Final Fantasy VIII is trash.

Normally I agree with your posts, and this time will be no different.

I didn't really like this game that much. I love all things Final Fantasy, but I wasn't too keen on this game. That being said, I did play and beat this game twice. I hated Junction too, but once you found out which spells were good for junction, it was easy as pie. Also, I never used magic in the game, because I never really found it useful. I really liked the card mini-game, and spent countless hours playing that with anyone who ever wanted to play. All in all, it was a letdown, and definetly worse than VII, but a good, and classic RPG in it's own right. At least square learned from their mistakes, and never made a FF game based solely on a love story.

@dmeisterJ

Love story my foot!!

they didn't even frikkin talk to each other 90% of the game!

Apart from that FF8 was graphically good, ofcourse I feel the SOundtrack was BRILLIANT & better than FF 9's

however neither FF7 or FF8 stood upto FF6's story & it's soundtrack!

FFVIII is great same with FFIX. They are better then FFVII in everyway.

If you have problems with those then you would hate Golden Sun which is between FFVIII and FFIX in greatness.

That was the problem.  A love story between two people who barely talk!

I loved it and recently bought it again since my last disks crapped out.

what?! lol

FF8 is a great game.

I used to hate the draw system but its dope when you utilize it to its fullest.

Yeah, I would hate Golden Sun if it were anywhere near the "greatness" of FF8. But because I don't that must mean GS isn't trash.