When you think about it, FFVIII was a super gutsy game in the franchise. After the huge success of VII, they really could have just retooled VII's design and released it but instead they really tried to shake up the formula and the RPG genre itself with getting rid of MP, having unlimited but killable summons, and changing around leveling, customization, and town mechanics. I mean, their really is not another game like VIII on the market, so if its so radically different, did the change really impact the future installments or did it simply reconfirm that people only desire the status quo?