Do you think FFVIII's Game Design had an Impact on the series?

[Slothy]

I feel the fact VIII decided to get rid of Armor and meaningful weapon upgrades in exchange of integrating it into the Junction system was a pretty big departure. There really wasn't a game before that tried it. While spells are still limited, technically the ability to draw and simul-cast meant it was possible to have infinite spells in some battles, and the way it integrated with customization, many players found themselves to stock up on spells to use as makeshift armor and buffers for stats. You still equip Skills through the GFs but VIII makes it far more limiting, at first but then you also get the ability to remove them and replace them. Making them technically more flexible than V-VII's systems. The shear fact they introduced a "steal spell" mechanic in itself was pretty interesting and has never really been done since which is a shame because I feel it could be expanded into something cool. The leveling system itself also brought in some major new dynamics to the game that most gamers at the time took for granted. Not many games punish you for gaining levels.

You know, I've actually said this before, but FFVIII's junction system was a wonderful concept. I mean it, I really love the idea of the junction system. It was new, it had never been done before or since, and it allowed for some pretty cool customization potential. The only thing I hated was how absolutely unbalanced it is. I wouldn't have a problem with requiring either very deep knowledge of the game and mechanics, or a lot of luck, to break the gameplay, but in this game, even a small amount of understanding of what you were doing made the difficulty disappear.

I would love to see another company take up this system (or do something similar) and balance it well. Of course Square could revisit it themselves, but I don't have a lot of faith in them these days to get much right.

One of the biggest problems with the junction system as I see it is that there are so many ways to get new magic in the game with almost zero risk, and you gain them all so early, that there's no incentive to not spend a few rounds drawing each battle until you've stocked a couple dozen more spells for each character, then wipe out your opponent. Or buy as many tents as you can and refine them into Curaga's. I don't think there's any easy solution to that and certainly no single solution. It'd require a tweaking of pretty much every system at work in the game to fix it.

As to the original question, I can't see that it had much of an impact at all. The junction system was quickly abandoned, either for being too different, or too difficult to balance. And with regard to everything else, since they've been moving (with the exception of FFXII) to more linear games with less interactivity in towns (or even towns at all), it's hard to say VIII had a lasting impact. Mind you, I think it's so reviled among many fans that Square probably thinks it would be crazy to take too much from it.