Yes. FFVIII was too... I can't really think of a word, but it could have been alot better. Monsters lvling with you? Bah! That means you can hit lvl 100 in the first area! WHAT? LVL 100? NO! L5 death is now useful!(Yeah, it has decimated my whole party many times before.) Hmm, I can now do great damage with GFs and summon them unlimited times! Good thing, it's the only thing in the game that even does a good amount of damage. What? If I want to do anything other than attack I need to equip a GF anyways? What if I get a person without a GF thrown into the Ulty battle? Bah! No more MP you say? Ok, then what? A draw system with 100 max magics? Juntion? I used ultima and my HP went down! WTF!

Yeah, IX rocks VIII, except in the card game. VIII was good, but IX seemed way to random...