Quote Originally Posted by Scarmiglione View Post
One of the reason FF VIII gets a bad rep is because of the VII fanboys. They claim it's too complicated, or lacklustre. Chances are they're just too stupid to play it.
I'm more than willing to rip into FFVII's flaws any day of the week (it's not even around the top of my list of favourite FF's), but FFVIII has more than it's fair share of problems.

The story starts well but gets pretty bad as it goes on. There are plenty of Deus Ex Machina plot twists, combined with character development that's either cliched, makes no sense, comes out of nowhere, or even all of the above. Combine that with boring characters (with the exception of Laguna and company), and a villian that is neither interesting, nor even developed and the story can be pretty boring.

The Junction system isn't complicated either. In fact, the only thing it is is broken. It's incredibly easy to overpower your characters extremely early on, and it's always obvious just which spells you should junction, and which stats will benefit you the most. Before long, you're crushing enemies with no effort to a degree that doesn't happen in other FF's without spending a lot of time power leveling.

And then there's the soundtrack. It's still decent overall, but it isn't Uematsu's best work. Many of the themes border on being elevator music quality. Granted, some of the songs are amazing, but those are few and far between.

All that said, I still enjoyed the game overall (hard to believe, I know, considering how I just ripped into it). It's worth at least one playthrough for any FF fan anyway. Heck, I've played through multiple times myself.