Hello readers, this is my Final Fantasy VIII review, just as promised. I have played the Remastered version, but that barely affects the game at all so I won't need to bring it up again. With no time wasted, lets go headfirst into the review.
Plot: The plot of Final Fantasy VIII is about a school of teens being trained for extreme mercenary and high class soldier work. In a big system of Gardens (In game term for the schools) the protagonists of this story are from Balamb Garden, led by Headmaster Cid. When the team gets a special request, they set off to another continent, just to find out the true scale of their mission. The plot of Final Fantasy VIII is very standard at the very beginning, and by the end is very convoluted. Regardless, the entire story is a wonder to play through.
Characters: The cast of Final Fantasy VIII, either being late into their teens or a young adult (Basically, 16-19), do somewhat well in the story. It gets annoying after a while when Squall keeps acting like everything is boring, or Rinoa always whining and bugging Squall, or Quistis constantly talking about being a failure. Everyone else is quite good in the game and I feel like I can respect them as characters. This game has a quite a few good side characters, unlike its predecessors. Nida is a very low-key character, Headmaster Cid has a couple of twists of his own, and Laguna's story is one of the most interesting side stories I have played in a video game.
Battle mechanics: This game introduced the Junction system, which was a hit or miss depending on the gamer. The Junction system gave you the option of pulling magic out of enemies, or not using magic at all. This game auto-leveled every enemy to fit according to your level, so you basically were punished for leveling up. Here lies the latter part of the Junction system. In order to be stronger, you have to junction magic to different stats in order to raise your stats. For example: Squall deals 1000 damage at whatever level you are at. If you junction 50 Quake you might inflict something like 1400-1700 damage, and if you Junction 100 Ultima (The strongest magic in the entire series), you will most like inflict 8000- 9999 Damage. This works the same way with health, vitality, speed, etc. Some people complain that this system makes the game too easy because it basically removes the traditional grinding you can do to get stronger, but I think that it is even better than grinding because it encourages exploration and helps you understand the world and enemies even better than before.
Content: This game is so big that it needed another disc to fit the game on. Final Fantasy VII had 3 discs, with the last one being for the final dungeon and the very long final cutscene. This game has 4 discs, with the final one being the same as VII. This game does not even have any optional bosses to fight (except for a hidden one at the end of the game), and it still has more content than any Final Fantasy game before it. This is possibly one of the longest Final Fantasy games, only being rivaled by XII and X, which are also incredibly long games. Sometimes this game drags on with time wasting plot twists, but that is somewhat uncommon. While Final Fantasy VII took 40-100 hours to beat depending on playstyle, Final Fantasy VIII takes about 50-120 hours to beat depending on playstyle, and is quite worth your time.
Final Rating:
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