Final Fantasy VIII

"What was Square thinking?"

A few years back, Squaresoft was in the middle of being one of the biggest gaming companies on the market. Final Fantasy 4 helped them truly get off the map, while Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger made them one of the biggest companies to hit the Super Nintendo. If that weren't enough, Squaresoft also wound up being a huge factor in the Playstation's sales boom when they finally released the much-anticipated Final Fantasy 7 onto the scene. Final Fantasy 7 was the one game that began the mainstream craze for RPGs. Even during the times of Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger RPGS were somewhat of a niche genre, but after Final Fantasy 7 RPGs have grown into every facet of mainstream gaming America.

Because of all of this, Squaresoft was sitting high up on a mountain rolling in cash, and wound up being a company that sold games just because of their namesake. This isn't to say that Square has become the worst company out there or anything, but how could a company go from such timeless games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7 to titles like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, and Final Fantasy X-2?

Case and point, look at Final Fantasy 8. Squaresoft released some legendary games prior to Final Fantasy 8, so one would have to truly consider what convinced Square to release this. There are a few good things about Final Fantasy 8, but not many. In the beginning, Final Fantasy 8 does a rather good job. The opening theme is good, and graphically the scene that follows is an absolute masterpiece. Take a good look at what is going on however, especially Squall getting his face sliced wide open, because the game goes downhill from there; you'll soon come to realize that the opening scene is about the only time through the game where you'll enjoy seeing Squall's mug anywhere, because his character is one of the worst in the entire Final Fantasy series. Nothing like seeing a moody emo kid get cut wide open with no one around to help, eh? Even better is what happens afterwards. Squall recovers from Seifer's attack and goes after Seifer in a rage, but thankfully the scene ends right before Seifer gets his face cut wide open. Here we have a scene in which one of the worst characters ever made gets badly injured, yet Square decides to spare us the displeasure of seeing Squall's attacker get hurt himself. Pure genius.

In fairness, Final Fantasy 8 has its moments. First and foremost, Final Fantasy 8 features the best mini game ever, Triple Triad. It is a deep, involved card game that covers the entire game of Final Fantasy 8 from beginning to end if you want to get everything. It's also very easy to learn, and even the people who cannot stand Final Fantasy 8 give Triple Triad its fair respect. Secondly, the soundtrack is one of the best Square has ever produced; it's up there with the likes of even Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy Tactics. And lastly, the graphics are absolutely amazing. Unlike Final Fantasy 7 where some scenes retained polygon figures during the movie scenes, Square went all-out in delivering a good graphical product for Final Fantasy 8. But like Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 8 suffers from having flashy graphics and good music, but little else.

First, look at the very first thing there is to notice about any RPG: the characters. Final Fantasy 8 presents one of the absolute worst casts of characters ever seen, bar none. Some of them are decent, most of them aren't, and the main character of the bunch is the human manifestation of the blind leading the blind. Squall Leonheart's main theme is that he is a lionheart (what an amazing, original play on words we have with his last name) --- a loner who only releases his rage when absolutely necessary, if you will --- and a character devout of any and all outward emotion. This seems like it would be a good idea, after all the same sort of moodyness worked wonders for Cloud in Final Fantasy 7. But there is one large difference. Squall Leonheart, unlike Cloud, goes through virtually no character development throughout the entire game. Even worse, his constant '...whatever' attitude will make you wonder why someone else in the party doesn't kick the guy square in the crotch purely out of being annoyed to death. Here we have a world at war and a sorceress from the future attempting to kill time itself, yet Squall consistently does little more than sit in his own moody little world loathing about how much his life sucks, as well as never doing anything more than what he is ordered to do. You'll wait the entire game for Squall to break out of this rut, but he never will. If anything, he only gets worse as the game progresses.

Of course, there will always be Squall fans who ignore his character traits and defend him to the death simply because of his hot looks and the fact that Lionheart does more damage than Omnislash, but Squall has the innate ability to kill whatever form of story bothers showing up in the game on account of his introverted nature alone.

The other characters aren't much better, although none of them reach the depths of emo loner that Squall has set upon the world as the ultimate standard --- the personification of a lawn slug's place in the food chain. Squall begins the game in a sort of school called Balamb Garden, which is a facility that trains mercenaries. Squall's teacher, Quistis, is the second controllable character that you will meet on your wonderful journey through Final Fantasy 8. Quistis wound up being on the desktops of many teenage boys once they found out that a beautiful girl wore a skimpy teacher's outfit and used a whip in battle. Unfortunately for them, her crush on Kittenheart, err.... Leonheart was blatantly obvious from the start. Unfortunately, Squall goes on to treat Quistis like crap. In the middle of one random night, she takes Squall out onto a balcony only to have him blow her off completely with his moody, self-centred nonsense. Yet despite this, Quistis follows Squall around the world throughout the entire game so that she may continue to be his teacher. How sweet.

Zell Dincht is another wonderful addition to the cast of the game in that he.... fits in perfectly. After the events of Final Fantasy 7 took place, Tifa Lockheart apparently received a sex change operation. The result? Zell Dincht, an overly-emotional Sk8r Boi who manages to retain all of the battle tactics he learned during his/her time as Tifa Lockheart. There is also the heroine of the adventure, Rinoa. Despite going through a literal hell, a first for a Final Fantasy heroine, Squall always manages to be there for her until his true personality takes over. Quistis even manages to try telling Squall how stupid he is at one point, but he of course tries to act like a cool badass on top of being an idiotic loner. The results are Rinoa constantly in trouble, and Squall constantly trying to balance being an idiot and a Kittenheart in his own inner struggle while doing nothing more than what everyone else tells him to do. Confused? Welcome to Final Fantasy 8.

We must also remember Irvine and Selphie. The only thing you can honestly say about Selphie is that you're better off trying to make cod liver oil taste good than listening to one single word Selphie says throughout the entire game. Between her obsession with trains, her schoolgirl look and her bad attempts at comic relief it'll be a struggle to not have her kill herself in every random battle. Even worse is that Irvine actually starts out cool when you first meet him. You're trotting along, when all of a sudden this badassed sniper wearing a trench coat and a cowboy hat joins your team. But with all of his potential came his tragic flaw, as he turned out to be a badassed flirt that not even the stupidest of girls would ever be interested in. In other words, Irvine the Sniper actually manages to find a way to get ignored by Selphie the Pop Tart.

Bear in mind that the previous list of characters was a simple rundown of all of the characters you control in your party. One must not forget such characters as Cid, Edea, Fujin, Raijin, Adel, Laguna, Ultimecia, and Ellone. They are no better than the main cast, and even worse are the people over at Square who sat down and thought up the ways to make these characters all relate to one another. Rest assured that playing this game all the way through will not only make you lose a ton of faith in Square, but you will lose at least 15 points of your IQ after clearing Disc 2 and seeing the big "plot twist" of the game.

But despite how bad most of the characters are, it doesn't stop there. Final Fantasy 8 has one of the worst storylines you will ever experience in your entire life, assuming that you can even figure out what it is in the first place. The game's script is presented so badly that you will either not get the story at all, or be shocked by how bad it is. Look at the very beginning. Squall starts off in a school known as Balamb Garden, and the Garden's purpose is to produce an elite mercenary team known as 'SeeD'. Yes, SeeD. Here we (supposedly) have a world crisis going on, and the world's big hope are seeds from the garden. What a witty play on words. Imagine:

John Doe VI: "Halt, who goes there! You are trespassing on private property."
Squall: "Squall Leonheart, SeeD first class."
John Doe VI: "This area is under control by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America. Who sent you?"
Squall: "...flower."

To think that the same company who gave us SOLDIER, the Red Wings and the Returners is now giving us seeds from the garden as an elite mercenary force really proves that Square is running out of ideas. If you were a civilian on the brink of witnessing global annihilation, would you feel more secure in a trained group like SOLDIER or barely-trained "seeds"? Speaking of these people being untrained, it's somewhat odd that such a well-organized military establishment is so easy to get into. Squall's test for admission, no lie, is to simply follow Quistis into a cave and defeat Ifrit. This little 'test' could have been somewhat difficult had Squall not had Shiva at his disposal the entire time. Even more astounding is that the world has three Gardens, all filled with mercenaries.

And just to remind everyone about how stupid and/or self-obsessed Squall is, he was in a cold, dark cave. With Quistis. Alone. Given how often Quistis flirts with Squall in the first few hours of the game one would assume that he would stop sulking long enough to notice. Instead, he goes about his daily routine and ignores her.

Something is amiss when you have a character named after an animal that mates 50 times per day, yet he can't notice one of the cutest girls in gaming ready to throw herself at him.

Once Squall finishes being given a free pass into his field of purple flowers and candy clouds of lullaby known as the garden, Square hits us with yet another feature never seen in Final Fantasy. Instead of getting gil for fighting battles, you now make your money from a timed salary. Instead of being rewarded for your mindless killing of innocent enemies who are drawn into alternate dimensions to fight battles to the death through no fault of their own, the game simply pays you as you walk around. Wonderful. So what becomes of the task of mindlessly killing enemies? In the past we were taught that killing little animals in random battles gave us money. Now we have to work for our funds? Wonderful.

After the tutorial involving Squall's purpose among his sprouting produce section, the true adventure finally begins. If you don't plan on being a regular player of Triple Triad (the game's best feature), stop playing the game at this point. It starts out bad, only gets worse, and has all of four saving graces: Triple Triad, the music, certain graphics, and the constant hope that someone puts Squall out of his misery by beating him to within an inch of his life and laughing at him afterwards.

Lastly, there is the actual gameplay itself, namely the battle system. Final Fantasy 8's claim to fame is its Junction system, and to be fair, the Junction system is a pretty good feature to the game. It allows you to customize your characters however you desire once you get the hang of what you're doing. It's hard to learn at first, but that won't deter the average player from creating a party of demigods. The problem comes with a lack of balance. All you need to do to make your team untouchable early on is to Junction Tornado spells to your Hit Points. Near the end of the game, all it takes to be unstoppable is to find 100 Ultima/Meteor/Triple spells and Junction them to whatever stat you deem appropriate. Junctioning may be difficult to learn, but once you get even a hint of an idea about what to do with it you'll be in for one of the easiest games in the entire FF series.

One final thing to mention about the battle system is the Draw command. If you plan on Junctioning a lot of spells to your characters, then a lot of the game's battles become nothing more than Drawing from the enemies until you have 100 of each spell that you want. And unlike MP-based magic systems, your characters have a set number of spells that they can use. If someone has 24 Protects for example, then they can cast Protect 24 times, no more and no less, without worries of MP to manage. It's odd, and it's somewhat of a pointless fact. There is no reason to use your spells at all once you get farther into the game, as you are using your spells to raise your character's stats with the Junction system. Why go off and cast Ultima when it took so long to get 100 Ultima spells to Junction in the first place? All you need to do well in battle in Final Fantasy 8 early on is to know when to press R1 during Squall's attacks, how to Junction, and how to abuse Limits. Everything is pie afterwards.

Overall, Final Fantasy 8 isn't a game worth getting into. It's right up there with chemotherapy and reading Great Expectations in terms of fun factor, and the main selling points of the game are the graphics, music, and Triple Triad. When an RPG's good points mention nothing about the characters, story or gameplay, you're looking at a game with some serious issues. But with this said, FF8 isn't on the level of a Final Fantasy X-2 or a Chrono Cross; it's at the very least playable.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/04, Updated 11/14/05