Final Fantasy VIII. The most highly anticipated game of the 1998 release season. Some of you have merited it the worst in the series, however, I personally believe it the best. Everyone's thoughts? And, please, let's limit the amount of "I hate this game" comments to a minimum. I know you all do. One time telling me is enough...
I do think it's one of the weaker games in the series. The draw system was terrible, and the story fell apart towards the end, lazily introducing the final villain only a short time before you actually battle her. Also found the characters to be uninteresting, shallow and one dimensional.
Still, it's a good game. I do enjoy playing it, but compared to the greatness of some of the other FF games, it just can't compete.
It's not a dreadful game, but the draw system is unnecessarily tedious, there is no interesting villain and the plot completely falls apart. It's never going to be remembred as one of the Final Fantasy super-classics.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
It just can't match up to the WONDERFUL games that came before it. It's my personal belief that six and seven were the best and strongest games in the series thus far. Therefore, the bar was set extraordinarily high, and VIII just couldn't clear it.
I think the Ultimecia thing is something all can agree on (at least, a lot more can agree on than normally when it comes to video games)
From IV onwards, Final Fantasy realised that straight dungeoneering and levelling was not going to interest people on its own any more and it made this switch to character-based storylines. It is on those storylines that it has built its success since, and the vital part of those storylines is the characters. FF plots often do not make 100% sense- FFX is full of plot holes, for example, and is connsidered a classic.
FFVIIIs story is probably the most compromised. It could have saved all that with decent characters, but it really does not. Squall is beyond irritating all the way, some of the other characters are ok but nothing that really breaks through, Seifer could have been a great foil but instead just bcomes a thug you beat up every so often (interestingly, the game probably would have been better playing AS Seifer...)
Now, much of that can be argued. But I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks Ultimecia is any damn good at all. Truly one of the worst villains ever- you have no idea of motive, personality, charisma... anything. And FF games simply cannot survive without some kind of quality in the main villain.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
I agree with Ush... Ultimecia was poorly led up to... But I must disagree on Squall. While he is annoying to some extent, he really grew on me over time, becoming one of my favorite characters in the entire series altogether, though I must admit, Selphie and Irvine beat him out by a long-shot before it was over... It's true that the concept of Seifer was probably more a thug than anything, but it would have been very interesting to play from his standpoint, even if only for a bit. The draw system, is, without doubt the game's greatest let-down. It had the potential to be something great for your magic, but after the materia issue in FF7, 8 had no chance of even slightly beating the magic issue. I still say 7 had the best magic system in the series. I disagree with the whole "X-2" was better thing, though, as X-2 was a bunch of teenybopper, high school cheerleader like girls running around giggling all throughout the story, and ultimately became, as I saw it put somewhere (I wish I could credit where, because the writer was a genius for saying it this way) a Charlie's Angels rehash of Final Fantasy. It was heralded as a great game, but still... I think that, in theory, 8 has it beaten in that it was at least an original concept, not a continuance of a previous title, though I must say that the continuances of 7 are very well-done. All in all, however, I must say that 8 is, in my opinion, one of the greatest games in the history of the PSX.
Although I am slightly biased, as it was my first Final Fantasy...
I've always been of the opinion that (while cliched) it would of been SO much Superior to have Seifer follow the group and inadvertently gain Ultemecias powers.
That way we'd dump the crappy hag , gain the main villain and then get a decent final battle that no one has seen since FFVI.
No-one is disliking it on grounds that it underpowers you. I hate it because it is so boring; fight after fight spent just drawing spell uses out of bad guys. It slows the pace and excitement of the game considerably.
Tellling they never used anything remotely like it again.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
I loved it. ultimecia was gay. Squall was annoying in the beginning, but he slowly began to change the more time he spent with Rinoa. The love story ticked many off as well, myself included. However after numerous playthroughs I began to appreciate it. It doesn't hurt the fact FFVIII had superior character development than FF7. But in the end Ultimecia ruined it.
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Sep 11th, 2007 01:49 AM
