Why FFVIII?

[Sum1sGruj]

FFVIII has a mighty charm which makes it easy to overlook it's faults. However, I do not understand why this one in particular is so heralded. Perhaps it was the era in which it came out., FFVII was huge leap in the series, one in which I thank God was put on the Playstation platform and not Nintendo (with all due respect, but the 64 would have not given the game justice). So when VIII came out, FF seemed to be redefined, taking a futuristic spin.
This is perhaps why IX was slightly shadowed, because it went back to traditional aspects.

But to the subject- I've always had a few beefs with FVIII. Here is the trinity of disappointments I had:

-The first one is the drawing system. On the surface, it seems brilliant, but in practicality, it is repetitious and boring.

-The second is the leveling system. There is no joy in leveling up in VIII. The creatures level up with you, and even though IX has this, the leveling in VIII doesn't give you much leverage period.

-The third is the lack of armor. One of the best joys in any RPG is getting new stuff, and VIII simply just doesn't do enough. The weapon upgrades are few and far between, and there is nothing spectacular about them.

As I said, however, the game has an incredible charm. The story, music, and graphics (for it's time) are beautiful.

Anyhow, I thought I'd post this to see what others think, especially the big fans of this one specifically :)

[Jiro]

You will find, here, that the majority of members share your sentiments. Generally, FFVIII is a "weaker" title around these parts!

[Sephex]

I consider it a weaker title in general, but only because I have a bigger problem with the plot more than any other story heavy FF.

[MJN SEIFER]

I disagree on the first two.

I found Drawing to be an interesting way of getting spells, I always make sure to have at least on character with the Draw ability so I can get as much as I can, and I love the way refining was implemented into items. I had a lot of fun doing it.

The enemies don't level up with you, they level up as you do. Even if you hardly ever level up the enemies will still level up themselves. That's the impression I got, but it doesn't matter to me, because I always level up as high as I can on FFVIII. The key to me, is that if you can get the right amount of abilities and get your defences sorted, you can reach level 100 (not 99 in this game) and be virtually unstoppable. So levelling up still has it's awards in this game. The only thing I hated was that you were vulnerable to Level 5 Death while on highest level.

I think FFVIII is a phenomenal game, it is my second favorite FF.

[charliepanayi]

FFVIII has always been probably the most 'love it or hate it' game in the series - it certainly doesn't have the general adulationthat FFVII or FFVI (or even FFIX in recent years) have. But those who do like it tend to like it a lot.

[Wolf Kanno]

I actually loved the Drawing mechanic, it was just such a cool idea. It can get tedious but that's if you actually bothered to use it to get 100 of the spell as soon as it was available. Refining is what I had bigger issues with since I felt it borked the games difficulty.

I can agree that the enemies leveling with you mechanic didn't work as it should have. Part of that issue is once again how a clever player can abuse it to bork the game again but even without doing that, with a real good Junction set-up that even the auto-junction feature can set up for you, the only thing a Lv100 enemy has going for it is lots of HP, they still have issues injuring you. Malboro is probably the only exception... The other issue here is that high levels also gets you access to better magic and thus better Junctions, so it kind of defeats itself.

The armor thing does kind of bother me, I am an equipment junky who doesn't like messing with this sacred old RPG tradition, even games like FFX and XIII fail for me cause the equipment system is not as important as I would like it to be for customization purposes. Still, this was kind of a new idea back in 99, so I tend to be a bit more forgiving to VIII.

Ultimately my two main beefs with VIII has always been how easy it is to break the games. I mean VI, VII, and IX are pretty bad, but VIII can be borked in the first half an hour of actual gameplay if you know what you are doing. My other beef has always been with the plot and the way the characters were used that really failed to live up to the potential it had going for it, while it's certainly not the worse writing in the franchise *cough*FFXIII*cough*, in fact it's the only entry in the series exclusively written by Kazuhige Nojima that I can actually stand.

[Sum1sGruj]

The armor thing does kind of bother me, I am an equipment junky who doesn't like messing with this sacred old RPG tradition, even games like FFX and XIII fail for me cause the equipment system is not as important as I would like it to be for customization purposes.

FFIX is one of my favs. I find the eqiupment/ability system to be genius, and synthing items is super fun.
Probably the best one as far as equipment goes in my opinion, but others come close to that as well. I really like the customizaton XII offers.

And I have to agree with X as well. The equipment pretty sucked lol. One thing X has going for it though is it's creative boss battles. They required a far bit more strategy then brute strength, which I can dig :D

[Bubba]

I might be the only person who actually found this game quite challenging! My main draw towards any Final Fantasy game is the story. I enjoyed the majority of plot although there were a few notable exceptions which have been well documented on this site.

I agree with WK on the drawing element. It's only as irritating as you want it to be. I levelled up as normal as I wasn't aware that the enemies increased in levels with you. I also tended to just use auto-junction (this is probably why I struggled towards the end) as it meant I could concentrate on the story.

I'll probably play through the game again at some point (might download it to my Vita actually) but I won't be making any concerted efforts to break the game at all. These games are much more enjoyable with a bit of challenge. I'll probably try and use manual junctioning next time though.