There are certainly things to like about FFVIII. i have replayed it multiple times because of those things.

However I can never in any good conscience call it a good game. The cons far outweigh the pros.

The game really feels like they had no direction and just threw a bunch of "this sounds cool!" together. In the real world, you'll think its Christmas at the start of November. In FFVIII World, MONSTERS FALLING FROM THE MOON is not mentioned until right around thet ime monsters start falling from the moon.

The "ancient super advanced civilization" of FFVIII also vanished a grand total of...80 years before the game started. Yet almost nobody knows of the Centra civilization and you might have thought it vanished hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

You learn more about Sorceresses from a random NPC you can talk to in Balamb at the start of the game than you will ever learn from a main story cutscene in the entire game.

Balamb is basically a high school that dabbles in murder but the real implications of our heroes all being child soldiers is never really addressed or treated well. Similarly, Cid being a coward and asshole of the highest caliber is never talked about.

And much, much more. There's a good story in FFVIII but it was never properly executed at any point,