I absolutely loved FF8! My favorite Final Fantasy (my first of the series too)

Triple Triad Cards is what made it great. Also the gunblade. Just kickass.

I hate it so much. I tried it 4 times but it was soooo boring.   And I  am a Final Fantasy fan.  From the NES times to the PS2....  but that one....

akuma, the draw system isn't bad, it is actuallt quite intelligent how you can select the magic on your stats, quite some people didn't get it cause it was too complicated for them, plus, the GF was superb, one of the best parts of the games, you can upgrade your summons and learn abilities and skills via them which gave a new dimension to the battle system, plus! you could make them stronger while summong them while hitting square quickly, which made it interactive, and it was a challenge on it self, to stronger them as much a possible without screwing it up..

oh and yes, the card game is easily one of the best side-games every in a game, eventhough I still think besides all this, the game'comes too short of VII, Tactics, Xeno, BoF III, both Suikodens and both Lunars considering the psx rpgs..

but ey, let´s be honest, Squall looks like a gay with his leather pants and his leather gloves and his short leather coat with that white fur in his neck..

I loved it. The story was focused on love and that was compelling to me. It was different than most RPGs. I also liked the battle system.

Not everyone will like every Final Fantasy since they are so different from each other.

one thing I noticed, and I had the same problem with IX, is that the first CD is great, maybe genius, but after the first disc, in IX when you leave the first continent, it falls down and is no way as well developed and thought through as the first ten hours..

I loved FF8, it was nice to finally play a FF game that tried to be a bit different, also it was the first RPG I played that got rid of the typical need for power leveling since proper use of the junction system made extra levels mostly irrelevant.

oh flagship, come on, you can't mean that, in FFVIII you can significanlty get more quickly to leven 99 than in any other rpg, they don't come even close, you constantly need 1000 exp to level up, but it's not like you get less and less, you keep getting quite some, while you keep needing 1000 for a next level, so it really goes too quick..