I finally decided to give Final Fantasy VIII a shot, after avoiding it for 20 years. I have to admit I found it to be very mediocre. It took me a while to gain a proper understanding of the battle system. For the first half of the game, I pretty much won every fight with the use of my guardian forces. Without the fast forward x3 option on the remastered edition, I don't think I would have had the patience to tolerate the length of the summons.

I then started to question why my normal attacks and magic were only doing 100-200 damage maximum, until I realized that you become stronger with more magic stocked. I then spent about 3 hours drawing 100 of every spell, and then the game became ridiculously easy (with the exception of fighting Ruby Dragons, Ultima and Omega Weapon).

Overall, the story never really seemed to grab me. I was intrigued with the Laguna story, including really digging the Laguna battle theme (otherwise no tunes in the game really stood out to me, which is also unusual for a Final Fantasy game). So yeah, I played it, finished it (including defeating the super bosses), but was never enthralled with the game like I was with Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII and X.

I am just curious to know what other people's experiences were like with the game. Did you enjoy it? Find it mediocre? Dislike it?