I forgot this is the 20th anniversary of Final Fantasy VIII, too. I was more focused on Chroo Cross and replaying it. But now I think on it....
-both released in 1999
-both from Square
-both on the PS1
-both pretty iconic in spite of being fairly controversial
-both follow-ups to incredibly popular games which probably made the criticisms all the more harsh
-both probably tried too many things and subsequently failed a lot of them.

I have my opinions on both games but I prefer to hear what you all think. Which of them do you prefer in the following areas and why?

Gameplay

Story

Characters

Music

Graphics/Visuals/Art Design


For my part, I'll just answer Gameplay for now.

Gameplay
FFVIII has one of the worst battle systems I've ever seen while CC has my all time favorite JRPG battle system. FFVIII committed the unforgivable sin of introducing level scaling for the first time in an FF game...for the one FF game where levels don't matter at all. The game is designed around Junctioning and that's where your real stat gains come from. Leveling is actively discouraged. So why the smurf does it have level scaling? Playing the game is detrimental to your enjoyment of the game. It is of course also legendarily broken and easy. Get Siren/Life RF on your 5 free Tents/Junction Curaga to HP and never die again. All within about 3 hours or so?

Chrono Cross meanwhile did so many things I loved. It had gated levels and stat gains so you couldn't just grind your way passed an obstacle. The Stamina and Field system meant you had to plan your next few moves in advance and couldn't just spam super moves like, I dunno, Limit Breaks. Speaking of which, the whole "use an Element and it's gone" feature as well as how limited your options are for reviving characters also demanded more strategy than normal. A minor thing but the three different type of melee attacks kept fights from being overly monotonous X mashing. Like others I wish there were more Double and Triple Techs and a greater diversity in party member abilities. But, well, that's not much of a factor when going up against FFVIII which has zero diversity in gameplay between characters.