Until recently, there was one big hole in my personal Final Fantasy history – the one game from the entries before the series went online that I hadn’t beaten. Final Fantasy VIII was the successor to VII that I knew didn’t live up to the magic of VII at all. I knew about how Squall was a lame protagonist in comparison to Cloud, about the stupid-as-hell “plot twist,” I’d heard of the “Rinoa = Ultimecia” theory. I’d even started the game several years ago, and played the first 2 hours or so, but then gave up, deciding to invest my time into something I’d like more. Now, with the ability to play it on the PSP, I finally went back to this game and filled that gap.
Game: Final Fantasy VIII
Developer: SquareSoft
Platforms: PlayStation, PC; PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita (PSOne Classics)
Original release: 1999
Territories: All
I should say that Final Fantasy VIII entirely lived up to the expectations – nowhere near VII’s league, but nothing incredibly horrendous like its biggest haters would claim. The story and characters are pretty uninspired as a whole (except from a couple of exceptions I’ll mention later), but it makes some interesting gameplay experiments, which ultimately make it easily abusable, but I wouldn’t write them off as bad. It also offers some interesting locations, as most FF games do, and a relatively epic final stretch. After a promising beginning, there are some incredibly ridiculous moments in the story later on, which harm the game’s overall quality big time.
The screenshots in the review have been taken by me.
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