Final Fantasy VIII - Flawed Yet Still a Fantasy Masterpiece!
52Final Fantasy 8 had a lot to live up to and it ended up being a little bit divisive between fans. I love this game, I think it's excellent but I can openly admit there's so many things that'll turn players off this game, the draw system can be a chore and you're punished for using up your supplies of magic, enemies scale to your level which defeats the purpose of level ups, systems are difficult to learn when starting out, and I've even got some small criticisms with the story. But it's rare I can still thoroughly love a game so much, despite what seems like pretty big flaws in it's design.
00:00 - Intro
00:41 - Garden SeeDs
02:35 - Squall
06:05 - Heavy Systems Design
10:58 - The Crew
14:33 - The 'Remaster'
16:53 - Triple Triad / Minigames
20:31 - Soundtrack
23:27 - The Rival
25:20 - WAR
27:41 - Endgame
30:15 - The Extreme
31:49 - Finale
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It had only been 2 short years since Final Fantasy VII was released and blew my mind, and with Winter 1999, you can bet Final Fantasy VIII was at the very top of my Christmas List. Christmas could not come fast enough that year.
I remember being in the living room, excited and telling my family that's the game I want when the advert for FF8 came on TV.
To keep me going till Christmas, I picked up a special edition of the official PlayStation magazine all about Final Fantasy VIII with a retrospective for the entire Final Fantasy series, this was pretty cool because Europe didn't get all of the original releases. But what I really wanted was the playable demo of Final Fantasy VIII, and I played the heck out of this. It allowed you to play an early mission and test a few summons like Bahamut which aren't normally available until much later in the game.
One of the most stand out changes were the more detailed character models that were a big step up from ff7's chibi style, and SquareSoft would continue to make use of pre-rendered backgrounds that still looked amazing for their time. The demo suggested a world of conflict and strong themes of war. Quite a bit more dark and realistic but the world was still sprinkled with classic Final Fantasy elements, like returning monsters, Chocobos, and summons, that made me feel at home.
So This world is made up of 3 gardens, Balamb, Galbadia, and Trabia, they're almost like military based universities that, educate, train, and test students so that they'll graduate as SeeDs. And yes... metaphorically the gardens produce SeeDs and they have one ultimate objective, to destroy Sorceresses. The antagonists of this universe.
The story starts in Balamb Garden, with our protagonist Squall and Seifer brutally duelling each other for training in the form of a cinematic. Squaresoft somehow managed to raise the bar for cinematics even higher, with a step up in terms of detail and animations from the previous Final Fantasy. Cinematics were more alive and action packed with massive battles and events to come later.
Our main character Squall, is a student at Balamb Garden and on his way into becoming a SeeD. This is the first time we see a gunblade across the Final Fantasy universes, gunblades can't shoot long range - they're fired whilst slashing up enemies to enhance attacks. And this becomes a feature in combat, you can press R1 to shoot as you strike an enemy and if you time it right, there will be explosive extra damage. It's a neat little feature than makes the regular JRPG turn based battles a tiny bit more interactive and exciting.
Squall is often disliked or criticised as character for his emo, cold, and apathetic attitude towards others, but throughout the story of FF8 we see him develop as a character. We can also hear his inner thoughts and learn where his insecurities come from, he was an orphan who lost his family and then loses someone he considered to be his big sister. This results in a protagonist who's afraid to connect and communicate with others, fearing he'll lose them too.
Squall isn't some overpowered superman or always in the right perfect protagonist, hell the opening cinematic rushes him to the infirmary and leaves him with a massive scar across his face. This guy gets trialled and tested, often put in situations completely out of his comfort zone or depth, he has a hard time expressing his feelings, and he has his fair share of failures. Squall is written as a realistic and possibly relatable teenager with flaws and issues, and we get to see him develop as a person. His big weakness would be connections to others, while the crew of FF8 help him open up and develop, in the long run when it matters most his connections to others still aren't quite strong enough which leads to his defeat. It's other characters that have to rescue him and save the day.
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