In brief defence of Final Fantasy 8

[dscross]

I know every nerd under the Sun loves to argue about which Final Fantasy is the best or worst, but I?ve noticed there is still a lot of hate with regards to the game whenever the topic arises with me and I would like to hear people?s take on these thoughts.

Before I start this, I?d just like to say I?m not a massive Final Fantasy 8 fanboy or anything. My favourites are actually 6, 4 and 15 respectively. BUT every time the topic of Final Fantasy arises I hear people hurling accusations at 8 because of a couple of things which I consider minor quibbles. Some people even claim it?s ?the worst Final Fantasy? so I find myself having to defend it. Therefore, I thought I?d make a post about it, because I actually think it?s the most interesting.

And before anyone pulls the nostalgia card on me, I played it after 6, 4 and 7. I have played all the FF games now except for the MMOs too. Also, I?m purposely talking more about story than the junctioning system in this post because, personally, I think it?s an easy gameplay mechanic that really isn?t as complicated as everyone seems to think and, to me, it?s just a case of ?getting better? or concentrating on the tutorial. I don?t see the point in arguing about this. I don?t consider myself particularly amazing at RPGs and I picked it up in no time. Plus, it actually makes the game quite easy it you know how to use it.

Shift from 7 to 8...

Anyway, we all know the series made a quantum leap in 1997 with the release of Final Fantasy 7. It took full advantage of the hardware, using 3D graphics to create a more fully realised world, and the larger storage capacity of CDs to tell a Byzantine storyline that spanned over 50 hours long. Yet for all its progress forward, the game still seemed like a hodgepodge of different styles that never amounted to a satisfying whole (in my opinion).

Its aesthetics were a blend of Tolkien-esque swords and sorcery with Japanese anime and cyberpunk dystopia, while its storyline was now half melodrama, half plot-heavy comic book with the occasional stab at social commentary -- the game contained references to genetic engineering and corporate corruption, but it never really went anywhere with these topics.

By contrast, Final Fantasy VIII knew exactly what it was trying to be: a coming-of-age story built on the metaphor that growing up is a long, dangerous journey. What's even more interesting than the game's attempts at plausible character development and thematic depth is the fact that it's part of a larger trend.

Character Studies...

If Final Fantasy 8 were merely a triumph of aesthetic design, it would make for an atmospheric videogame but a thin storyline. Instead, the game subverts the usual fantasy narrative: it starts off as an epic adventure and slowly reveals itself to be a character study.

And as much as everyone tells me they hate the orphanage scene, I felt it could be viewed as a resonant metaphor: the experience of warfare stole their childhood innocence and is slowly turning them into soldiers who have no purpose except the next battle. More than that, it?s a commentary on how the responsibilities and pressures of adulthood can cause us to forget who we once were. Anyone who has ever rediscovered a childhood memento and found old memories flooding back can sympathise with characters who are amazed at how much they?ve forgotten.

This plotline reminds me of some of the best work of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-creator Joss Whedon, who proved himself a master of using fantasy as an allegory for real-life pain (consider the unforgettable episode in which Buffy sleeps with her boyfriend and accidentally transforms him into a soulless monster). Indeed, Whedon suggested that he might be a fan of the game in a 2007 interview with The Onion?s AV Club in which he stated that his new favorite musical genre was YouTube music videos of Final Fantasy VIII.

There are other fascinating subplots, one of my favourites being a the series of strange dreams that Squall and the others keep having about a man named Laguna Loire, a journalist-turned-soldier who fought in the earlier war. Squall watches with somewhat amused detachment as Laguna flirts with a torch singer during shore leave, gets injured and recuperates in a small town, and is eventually captured by the enemy.

When the two meet face to face in the present, Squall learns that Laguna is his father, who disappeared after the war ended in order to become a political leader in a distant country. Unlike most RPGs, which pump every event and strange happening full of cosmic importance, Final Fantasy VIII keeps its focus deeply personal: in the end, the cryptic dreams are revealed to be nothing more than a son?s attempts to understand his absent father.

Conclusion...

As I said, I?m not an FF8 fanboy and I don?t think think It is proof that videogames can reach levels of high art or anything. I?m not denying there are huge flaws in the game. Its storyline is simultaneously convoluted and formulaic, and most of its 50-hour quest is spent on repetitive battles. But it?s fascinating to see how even a well-worn formula can allow for strange, beautiful environments, thrilling scenes, and even flashes of insight into human nature. And I think for all it tried to do it deserves more respect among FF fans than it seems to get.

 

[Silvanus]

Argh!! Just had a whole post written out, and the forum decided to eat it.

TLR: FFVIII is a fantastic game; setting and storyline are good, though the cast of playable characters isn't terribly interesting in comparison with VII & IX; drawing for magic is a perfectly good mechanic, though tying magic to stats through junctioning (so that casting a spell can weaken the corresponding stat) is needlessly complex.

Oh, and the orphanage scene isn't too bad, certainly no worse than Cloud seeing all the other Clouds in his head in VII. IX did the big self-reflection scene much better (in which Zidane trudges through Terra, resigned after discovering his origins, and then his allies join him one by one in the fight for survival).

 

[sXeth]

I'd say my main quibbles with it were that;

The acquisition of magic wasn't explained very well. They teach you drawing in the tutorial, which is the ultra-tedious horrible way to do it. Once you figure out Refining its like you unlocked easy mode or something, but thats literally never indicated to you to do.

The characters lacked much mechanical distinction. Other then sequences occasionally forcing you to use one or the other, there was no real reason to cycle them around for any unique strategic value.

Laguna's story felt unfinished. We see tiny bits of it, then we see the eventual outcome, but not the in-between. I'd personally say it seemed like the more interesting storyline as well.

 

[Mothro]

The acquisition of magic wasn't explained very well. They teach you drawing in the tutorial, which is the ultra-tedious horrible way to do it. Once you figure out Refining its like you unlocked easy mode or something, but thats literally never indicated to you to do.

I would say it makes little sense to still be complaining about the tutorial once you don't need it anymore. Truly, 20 years later and now that you know how to exploit the magic system, why is this a complaint.

drawing for magic is a perfectly good mechanic, though tying magic to stats through junctioning (so that casting a spell can weaken the corresponding stat) is needlessly complex.

Drawing and Junctioning go hand in hand. Since magic is a consumable in this game, the only real way to make drawing worthwhile is to be able to junction it to stats. Most people who know the ins and outs of this game don't actually use magic as magic so we know that using it wouldn't make drawing worthwhile, after all GF usage is free.

Being able to directly affect your stats is the main strength of Final Fantasy 8.

 

[Kotaro]

Final Fantasy VIII had a really interesting story and characters, but the gameplay consisted of numerous (admittedly very good) ideas that really didn't mesh together very well, creating a whole that was somehow lesser than the sum of its parts.
When you're making a game, you need to make sure that all your various gameplay systems complement one another to work in tandem, so the player doesn't end up fighting against themselves. But the design in FFVIII is just a complete mess, and it utterly fails at doing that.
Two examples that immediately stick out to me are junctioning magic vs. casting it, and Guardian Forces vs. the enemy level scaling. Let me explain:

The idea of junctioning magic, of linking different spells to your stats in order to raise them, was a really neat concept, and it lent itself to a lot of experimentation, figuring out which spells worked best for which stats, in order to create optimal character builds for your playstyle.
The problem comes from the fact that the stat increases are also tied to how many copies of the spells you had stocked, meaning that actually casting magic would lower your stats. So unless the spell is game-breaking enough to make it worth eating the stat decrease, like Aura, the player is highly discouraged from actually using magic, ever.
When you render one of your game systems (in this case, casting magic) extraneous like this, that is sloppy design that should be avoided whenever possible. The systems do not mesh.

For my other example, you can get all kinds of new abilities by leveling up your Guardian Forces, right? There's some potential fun to be had in seeing what cool stuff each GF has to give you, and trying out different things.
Except enemies also scale up based on your current level, meaning that unless you know how to min-max your character builds effectively, level grinding actually makes the game harder. So the smartest thing to do is to grab Encounter None as soon as possible and keep it active for the entire game, removing all the random encounters, so you gain as few levels as possible to keep the game from getting too difficult.
Putting aside the fact that it's laughable when a game discourages you from actually playing it, this means your GFs aren't leveling up either, so you aren't getting any of those cool abilities. Once again, the systems do not mesh.

Possibly the nadir of all of this for me personally is the final dungeon, Ultimecia's castle. There is a really cool concept there: a dungeon where the boss's power seals your various commands while you're inside it, so while you can technically go straight to fight the boss, that's a really bad idea with everything except your basic attack option cut off, so you need to explore and solve all the puzzles to fight minibosses that let you unseal one command with each one defeated.
I seriously love this idea, and I wish more RPGs would do stuff like this. It's a great final dungeon that could have ended the game on a high note... except for the actual final boss fight itself: Ultimecia. It would be fine, except for the fact that you don't get to choose your party for this fight. Rather, three characters are chosen randomly, so, instead of maxing out one set of three and using them (you know, the thing you've been doing for the entire game up to this point), you're forced to divide up all your resources among every single character, making all of them a lot weaker than they otherwise could be. "Oh, but if one of them gets knocked out in this fight, they're replaced by someone else!" I hear you say. That is true, but not something you can really rely on, because after a while, Ultimecia brings out her big guns, and--unless your characters are built optimally (which they won't be, because you've had to divide your resources)--you're pretty much guaranteed to get a total party kill and lose, so you don't have the time to waste waiting for the guys you don't want to die. Oh, and of course if Squall isn't randomly picked for this fight, you may as well just restart it, because your damage output is crippled without him. Random party selection out of nowhere is really dumb and I can not imagine why anyone thought it was a good idea.
A really poorly-designed final boss just kills an otherwise great dungeon, and if that doesn't totally sum up FFVIII as a whole, I don't know what does. Great ideas, lousy execution.

And as a post-script, for the record, I don't mind drawing magic all that much.

EDIT: Oh yeah, one other thing I forgot to mention: the orphanage plot twist. Yet another really cool idea that's not executed very well. I love the idea of GFs forcing their users to delete parts of their memory in order to make room for them in their brains. That's an awesome concept that does a lot to explain why so few people actually use GFs despite them being so powerful, and there's a ton of potential for interesting story there. It's just a shame that, aside from it being a convenient excuse for why no one remembers the orphanage, it never really comes up. What a waste.

 

[Jorpho]

One of my biggest problems with the battle system is that you wind up with a rather ridiculous number of different inventory items that pile up to the point that it becomes difficult to navigate and sort it all.

There are other fascinating subplots, one of my favourites being a the series of strange dreams that Squall and the others keep having about a man named Laguna Loire, a journalist-turned-soldier who fought in the earlier war. Squall watches with somewhat amused detachment as Laguna flirts with a torch singer during shore leave, gets injured and recuperates in a small town, and is eventually captured by the enemy.

When the two meet face to face in the present, Squall learns that Laguna is his father, who disappeared after the war ended in order to become a political leader in a distant country. Unlike most RPGs, which pump every event and strange happening full of cosmic importance, Final Fantasy VIII keeps its focus deeply personal: in the end, the cryptic dreams are revealed to be nothing more than a son?s attempts to understand his absent father.

It seemed to me more like there were just giant gaps in the story that they meant to fill out before they ran out of time and money. The stuff with Hyne and the origins of the witches, for instance.

I seriously love this idea, and I wish more RPGs would do stuff like this. It's a great final dungeon that could have ended the game on a high note... except for the actual final boss fight itself: Ultimecia. It would be fine, except for the fact that you don't get to choose your party for this fight. Rather, three characters are chosen randomly, so, instead of maxing out one set of three and using them (you know, the thing you've been doing for the entire game up to this point), you're forced to divide up all your resources among every single character, making all of them a lot weaker than they otherwise could be. "Oh, but if one of them gets knocked out in this fight, they're replaced by someone else!" I hear you say. That is true, but not something you can really rely on, because after a while, Ultimecia brings out her big guns, and--unless your characters are built optimally (which they won't be, because you've had to divide your resources)--you're pretty much guaranteed to get a total party kill and lose, so you don't have the time to waste waiting for the guys you don't want to die. Oh, and of course if Squall isn't randomly picked for this fight, you may as well just restart it, because your damage output is crippled without him. Random party selection out of nowhere is really dumb and I can not imagine why anyone thought it was a good idea.

"Ultimecia brings out her big guns" ? I remember the final battle and how silly it was that some of my un-equipped characters were coming up, but I don't remember having any problems by the time the right ones came into rotation. (It seems in theory the "right" way to do things is to actually Draw one of Ultimecia's unique spells, but I did not find myself needing to do that.)

 

[Kotaro]

"Ultimecia brings out her big guns" ? I remember the final battle and how silly it was that some of my un-equipped characters were coming up, but I don't remember having any problems by the time the right ones came into rotation. (It seems in theory the "right" way to do things is to actually Draw one of Ultimecia's unique spells, but I did not find myself needing to do that.)

The summoning of Griever and subsequent junctioning of it and transformation (i.e., the various "phases" of the battle) are actually based on time passing during the battle, rather than Ultimecia's remaining HP. The easiest way to win the fight is to take her out before she can summon Griever in the first place. That's the only way I've ever managed to do it.

 

[Mechamorph]

I believe that in the greater scheme of things, FFVIII will go down as one of the "decent to good" FFs. While the characters were not always memorable, the story was solid enough but its system mechanics had no coherency. It had that "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" vibe rather than a planned structure from the start. Admittedly later FFs would knock it further up the scale as they fill up the bottom rungs of the ladder like XII, XIII and pre-Realms Reborn XIV.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Wow that's quite the in depth analysis. Putting aside the fact that FFVIII was largely responsible for giving JRPG's the reputation of having broody angsty protagonists, I didn't find the relationship between Squall and Rinoa(?) very believable. However that's not what killed the game for me. No, that was the fact that I found I could cruise through the game smashing down enemies with powerful magic and not even bothering tow upgrade my weapons, which was good since for some reason they decided that simply buying new weapons from a shop was too simple. Then I reached the boss that had partially absorbed Rinoa and thus my powerful magic was useless and I only had the dinky starting weapons. It didn't help that the last save point was past a point of no return. So I said "Fuck this shit, I'm done."

 

[EscapistAccount]

The acquisition of magic wasn't explained very well. They teach you drawing in the tutorial, which is the ultra-tedious horrible way to do it. Once you figure out Refining its like you unlocked easy mode or something, but thats literally never indicated to you to do.

Definitely a problem, they finally get around to explaining some of the spell junctioning around disk 2 but they really ought to have either explained and toned down the refining far earlier, or seriously considered removing refining entirely.

The characters lacked much mechanical distinction. Other then sequences occasionally forcing you to use one or the other, there was no real reason to cycle them around for any unique strategic value.

Pretty much, the only difference was minor differences int he limit breaks as a couple had high variance abilities and the rest a more consistent set, but once you grok junctioning and refining the DPS for most of them just falls by the wayside.

That's the only way I've ever managed to do it.

The easiest way is to get two of a few specific cards and refine for ten Holy War and 100 Hero. Not only does this give you the totally in-universe appropriate fun of busting out your Magic decks while the world burns, if you feel like it you get two useful cards without even needing to play it.

Once you have those level Diablos up enough to get enc-none, stick it on and wander round the Isles of Heaven and Hell drawing tonnes of Ultima and Flare. Junction both to peoples elem-def and get a tonne of good GFs to junction around. Junction 100 Haste to everyone's speed. Junction whatever you feel like to st-def and st-atk, it hardly matters. Maybe Death or something, that's spicy. Junction something you have a hundred of and that has 'ga' in its name to elem-atk and do it again if you can, you want to be landing 8000-9999 damage with each hit to vanilla opponents. Just remember what's junctioned where, it won't matter in the final battle but it will while you're levelling up. Do Curaga/Esuna to health and so on.

Build each ultimate weapon if possible and unlock limit breaks, don't bother with anything intermediate, go Lionheart or go home.

If you want to, grind XP with Odin/Gilgamesh by taking enc-none off and walking round the Island and running from anything that doesn't get autonuked.

Get into Ultimecia, start fight, chuck a Holy War and start spamming limit breaks. You're nearly invulnerable unless you're hit by Meltdown which dejunctions everything. Once you run out of Holy Wars switch to Heroes and keep going, use Rinoa's dogcannon rather than Angel Wing as it's weaksauce, your best damage dealers are Lionheart and whatever chicken-wusses ult is called. Just do that while occasionally replacing buffs and reusing your Heroes etc. Eventually she will summon and then 'junktion' with Griever, it means the fight gets easier because she stops using Meltdown, from then you're pretty much good. Don't bother with GFs, don't bother with magic, don't bother with drawing, scanning or any of the other interesting combat stuff, Ultimecia is purely about keeping your shields up and pounding away.

EDIT: From a story perspective FFVIII hasn't aged well, it's pure teen wangst and it doesn't work well any more, I'd almost love them to remake it but with more well adjusted and fleshed out characters, I think the story could be fun if the SeeD ops were a bit more professional. Mechanically it needs more reason for me to vary my party and the refining/junctioning system was very easy to break, but I like the magic-as-item system a lot and I enjoy the game for how customisable the stat blocks felt compared to just slotting materia. The story complaints aren't one of premise as I got what they're going for, but of execution. The characters feel flat and poorly fleshed out and nothing sells me on a bunch of 17-18 year olds being sent off on their own. I'd rather they either made them more adult or made them more teenage and built on that element more.

 

[sXeth]

The acquisition of magic wasn't explained very well. They teach you drawing in the tutorial, which is the ultra-tedious horrible way to do it. Once you figure out Refining its like you unlocked easy mode or something, but thats literally never indicated to you to do.

I would say it makes little sense to still be complaining about the tutorial once you don't need it anymore. Truly, 20 years later and now that you know how to exploit the magic system, why is this a complaint.

The game standing on its own feet without external metaknowledge helping it along, presents a ridiculously tedious progression system and completely ignores a key element of it. I'd call that a worthwhile complaint. You can remedy it, the same way folks mod Bethesda stuff to hell and back to fix/improve it, or rely on external wikis like trying to figure out how Dark Souls 1's stats works (or literally anything in Ark, if you want a more extreme example). But none of that is a component of the game itself.

 

[Mothro]

The acquisition of magic wasn't explained very well. They teach you drawing in the tutorial, which is the ultra-tedious horrible way to do it. Once you figure out Refining its like you unlocked easy mode or something, but thats literally never indicated to you to do.

I would say it makes little sense to still be complaining about the tutorial once you don't need it anymore. Truly, 20 years later and now that you know how to exploit the magic system, why is this a complaint.

The game standing on its own feet without external metaknowledge helping it along, presents a ridiculously tedious progression system and completely ignores a key element of it. I'd call that a worthwhile complaint. You can remedy it, the same way folks mod Bethesda stuff to hell and back to fix/improve it, or rely on external wikis like trying to figure out how Dark Souls 1's stats works (or literally anything in Ark, if you want a more extreme example). But none of that is a component of the game itself.

Refining can be figured out by playing with the abilities that you learn from GF's. Just a little experimentation and it's all in game, right in the damn menu, you don't need outside sources to learn that. Just experiment.

 

[Hawki]

...so much for this being a "brief" defence. 0_0

On the other hand, you did spell "defence" correctly, so there is that.

 

[votemarvel]

I confess that one of the things that makes Final Fantasy 8 my favorite of the series was that it ditched the super deformed style of character design. It was never a deal breaker but I really do hate that style.

 

[sXeth]

I confess that one of the things that makes Final Fantasy 8 my favorite of the series was that it ditched the super deformed style of character design. It was never a deal breaker but I really do hate that style.

If I wagered a guess, you're on the younger side, right?

Cause the deformed-style stuff was prettymuch exclusively 7, and the pitfalls of early 3d more then anything.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

VIII is my fav one. All those common issues with it I never once had any issue with when I personally played it, so I just don't care or agree about any of those complaints at all.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

I can't be a fair judge of it I'm afraid, as I worked out how to break the game so quickly on my first playthrough with the junctioning system. Since I ruined the gameplay hook for myself, the rest of the game struggled due to it.

But, I respect your views on the game as a whole. I mean, I liked FF12 back in 2006. I know what it's like to like one of the black sheep games.

 

[Odbarc]

My personal review of FF8:

I like the game so I'll start with the the negative bits first.
The junctioning system isn't complex, it's just tedious. Even if you max magic so you only need to [Draw] 9 (or 10? Whatever) times per spell, which is it's maximum alloted amount you can Draw per round, it's not particularly fun and because they're attached to your stats, you never want to cast spells because you'll have less than maximum and return to the drawing more magic. But lots of enemies seem to have the spells you need to cast on them so you usually don't need.
The only part it becomes particularly irritating is when you switch back and forth between the dream characters and need to swap around who has which set and it just takes time when you just want to keep everything the same but you're made to switch or have nothing - which is also bad.

Which brings us to the second problem I have, which means Summons are your major spell source, they do good damage but you almost always want to use the Boost ability which means spamming a button every turn for maximum damage. It's much worse with the short animation summons where you definitely can't get 255 boost points but the long animations are long but you'll generally always get 255. Eventually the animations get long and tedious and I REALLY hate that about games. It's even a bad feature of the newest Street Fighter games with their ultra combos. When it hits, it does a definite amount of damage and 'combo' hits but they take forever and there's no way to skip it or enable a 'quick' alternative. It can be just as mechanically effective to be a 1 hit loads of damage thing and take only half a second instead of half a minute.

Lastly, since cards eventually can be broken into items you need or want (or rare spells), somehow bad card Rules always invade your region and make it hard to win suddenly and losing to some dope with crappy cards because they did a [Side] and it for some reasons combo into a perfect (?!) and you lost all 5 cards because of some rule that doesn't make sense and never works in your favor to steal all their crappy cards.

--

But the good stuff. The story is compelling, beyond the emo-main character nonsense who seems to get all the girls by rejecting affection and attention and becomes the Leader of everything by not wanting to be the Leader or even a participant. (I personally do not find the Gunblade to be cool at all. Squall looks like the effeminate male cheer leader and some how he's the jock in this world. Japan. -_-)
But when you have these 'missions' that plays out like a Final Fantasy / Solid Snake kind of thing, your performance effecting a ranking that rewards how much money you earn, these mini-game main quest events are rather compelling and gives you a reason to stay interested in the current story portion.
It was really cool that they had the in-battle and out-of-battle models the same and in good resolution (for it's time). FF7 had that low/high alternates.
Playing through the game, everything seemed to not make sense and feel really confusing. Taking in all the 'new' kind of blocked what was really going on until I made a second play through years later. It was all actually very interesting and probably one of the strongest story told FF games out there. Squall eventually redeems himself in my eyes as less of a prissy whiny brat and man's up a little bit. It might have been nice if his battle performances reflected this change a bit by not having him be the strongest member of your party immediately. Like, maybe picking the Gunblade as his weapon of choice 'because he thought it was cool' like a dweeb or something and couldn't use it very well and gets his ass handed to him by Seifer who CAN use the weapon which is WHY he uses it. And Seifer could at least have a reason for picking on Squall because Squall made a bad choice of picking a weapon he doesn't know how to use and makes Seifer look stupid for having the same weapon and people might associate him for also just picking a weapon "that looks cool."
Quinoa, I think her name was, is a Teacher for some reason then decides NOT to be one for some reason and is either a student or just tags along for some reason. Her character was pretty lame.

Also some of the new summons were also introduced and interesting. No Ramuh but (Quetzalcoatl???), Phantom Train's reappearance was cool, Zell having Tifa-like-Blitz -- didn't have he some stupid long-before-Tyson-did-it-tattoo-on-his-face or something?

I think my disc was scratched around the time they were in space so I didn't finish it that 2nd time.

5/10.

 

[FalloutJack]

I have incredibly low opinions of FF8. My rants are legendary on this matter. I feel as though the best rants on why the game is NOT good are somewhere between my writing and Spoony's videos. (Someone remastered those videos for him, so they're easily findable.) To put shortly, I found the character designs, writing, plot, battle system, and most everything else except for the music to be bad. It DOES have great music, but it's not any good, otherwise. Anyone looking for more detailed explanation, I actually favorite'd the most-recent version of the rant from a thread of my own making.

 

[Tanis]

While not my first FF game, mine was FF1 for the NES, FF8 is in my top 5.

The music, the overall story, Triple Triad, and having some of the better aesthetics of the series...all keep it up there.

My biggest issue with the game is the combat.
The tutorial for FF8 sucks...it just...sucks.
Auto-Junction is fine and all, but you don't really get the most out of it unless you know what you're doing.

But, hey, at least it isn't totally broken like FF2's and boring AF as FF7's.