What would have made FF8 a much better game?

[Flame]

Playing it on the PC, I only have some technical stuff I would have liked improved:

1) higher resolution, 800*600 was pretty common when the game came out

2) a quickload function... for Heaven's sake, I hate to restart the whole game
(and watching the Eidos logo all the time, because it can't be escaped) every
time the game won't let me abolish a stupid card game rule :mog:

3) and for that matter, a "quit" function would have been nice too

Otherwise, great game, I'm just playing it for the second time.

[Black Waltz No3]

The Junction System meant it was far too easy to max out your players stats early on. Draw system was slghtly annoying and I HATED how you didn't get money from monsters as it was too easy to amass a huge ammount of money in a very small time.

Other then that... Good game!

[dman]

Haste - The ATB bar went so fast that when you were inputting a command, the haste would have worn out by then.

Graphics - Who really wants to play FFVIII battles on crappy PSX @ 0.00000001 fps?

Development of other characters - already mentioned .

Menus - Grey menus looked awful. Compare it to FFX's.

Drawing magic - You should only have to draw magic ONCE, and after that you should have an infinate supply, but casting it would cost MP.

Training Centre was not very good for training.

You should have known about Ultimecia right from the very start.

[soulICE]

definitely should have focused on the other characters besides rinoa and squall.. i know that was already mentioned. oh sure, we know that irvine and selphie will *probably* hook up, and zell has the library girl.. but what about quistis? poor quistis, squaresoft tossed her aside just to progress the story of rinoa and squall.

rinoa was overrated while on the other hand the other characters were underrated (especially quistis)

edea as a perm. party member is a good idea. also, should have seen more of seifer, perhaps see him playing both sides just to see the interaction between old friends and rivals.

aaaaaand, looking at grey menus for too long made the white text blur. *sigh* at least with 9 you could change the color, or even better was 7's.. ANY color you wanted.

ok im rambling. *shuts up* :rolleyes2

[BraSkAs_FiNAl_AeoN]

I thought the game was awsome. i loved the juncitioning system. the story was good. the monster, yeah they were kindof easy and impossibly to lose to with the lionheart and auras. omega weapon was an extremly fun and awsome mini boss to beat. as far as the ending and the R=u debate yeah they could have touched on that a bit moe but its up there with myfavorites. 1. FF7 2.FF8 3.FF6 4.FFX and hopfully FFX-2
oh yeah and i thought qdin shouldnt have died

[BraSkAs_FiNAl_AeoN]

i meant odin

[FFboy4ever]

i like the game, i really do! the only things i don't like about it are.
1-the 'draw' system
2-the little character devolpment

[Avalon_Beouvle07]

I think the only problem Final Fantasy 8 had was Squall. He spent most of the game suffering from the inability to share his true feelings for anyone. Even after he rescued Rinoa from floating out into space, he still refused to tell her how he truly felt. That to me was FF8's biggest problem.

[eternalshiva]

ugh, a better ending that didn't make me want to slam my head on the floor. It's way too confusing. I still don't really know if the guy is really dead or alive at the end. And the story between Squall and Laguna should of been more developped. IT SUCKEd having to guess if they are or not related in any way. ...

[Jebus]

I kind of liked the junction system, but it did make the early game (and most of the last game) quite easy.

Aside from that, character development, monster leveling, mp, blah, blah.

I have nothing new to add really, so I'm just wasting half a minute of your time.

[Siwolae]

i love the game a lot but i think voice acting would be great and maybe if they remake the game for ps2 like how MGS was remade for that other sysytem. ^_^

[Peegee]

What is wrong with the junctioning system? I need reasons

I want a better plot, but whatever....I think the plot turned out too complicated for a simple love story:

(SPOILER)
A bunch of military school kids do missions, get assigned to work for Rinoa. Job was to negotiate with president....after a bunch of mishaps ended up chasing down Seifer. More running around. Meet up with Irvine. More running around. Failed assasination of Sorceress. More running around. MORE failed sorc fighting. Rinoa gets infested with Sorc powers. Go outer space. Adel and monsters go to earth. Rinoa captured, and suddenly Squall changes his mind and rescues her. Adel/Rinoa battle. Something happens (I have no clue because I'm only at the end of Disc 3, and I haven't played in years) and they go into time compression. Fighting of the other sorcs. Final sorc castle.

I forgot all about the (SPOILER)random telepathic time travelling and the eventual meetup of *argued to be, but probably likely to be* squall's father what's-his-name and his friends.

Anyway it's too complicated for me. I also forgot the GF nonsense and that the kids were (SPOILER)all from the same orphanage. Meh. I wonder how complicated FF7 was. I know (SPOILER)cloud is a clone, but that's all I know in terms of plot twists.

[Outsider]

I know what could make it better!!!

NOT MAKE IT

[Rostum]

Well Outsider, FFVIII has already been made so I think you just need to deal with it.

I personal think that they should have done something a little better than drawing magic from enemies, it was too easy and only time consuming.

Other than that, I think FFVIII is a good game. xD

[Ghost]

You know what I really hate? When people tell others to "deal with it" after they state an opinion on a message board which ASKS THEM TO STATE THEIR OPINION.
Moving along....

I have a lotta beef with this game, but I'll try to be as unbiased as possible. Also, I'm not just gonna bitch since the actual question for this thread is "What would make it better," I'll give my suggestions.

You want reasons the Junction system's a royal pain in the ass?
1. Casting magic reduced your stats. This could be avoided by not casting the magic which was junctioned to your stats except that the only magic with enough of a boost to bother junctioning to your stats also happened to be the only magic powerful enough to bother casting.
2. Drawing enough of a given spell to bother with casting OR junctioning took a really long time and was really boring.

I see two possible solutions to the Junctioning problem; either have two separate "compartments" to store drawn magic - one for stats and one for casting (though this doesn't solve the problem of three-hour-long draw-fests), or incorporate MP. Even a moderately priced consumable item for increasing the amount of a given spell already in your possesion would have helped this out. Coulda balanced it by dividing the spells into power levels and having the items come in varying potencies and priced accordingly.
Moving along....

The characters, INCLUDING the two who supposedly underwent the primary "character development" were two-dimensional and stiff. Rinoa was a whiny little baby throughout the story, showing no discernable signs of growing the hell up. She verbally claims to be experiencing an increasing maturity as a result of her experiences with the SeeDs, but her actions would seem to imply otherwise right up to the end.
And then something, somehow convinces the cold Squall to come around and really like her. However I felt that whatever it was Squall saw in her, it sure as hell wasn't shown to the player. Made it look like Squall just changed his mind for no reason.

To fix this? Well, I'm going to try not to get into the plot too much since in my opinion it needs a complete reworking from the ground up. The pacing was all off. As has been stated, the character development was next to nil. And the expertly woven plot twists I'd come to expect from Squaresoft at the time were replaced with "Oh I know how to cover this plot-hole! We all forgot!" I wrote better dramatic twists in 8th grade; nearly anyone could have. It's not genius-level creative writing knowledge that for something to be a believable part of your story, you have to incorporate it into the world BEFORE it comes into major play in the plot. Deus ex machina may have worked for the Greeks but audiences today deserve a little more credit.
So: better pacing, more depth of characters, more development of romance ("develop" being the primary operative word here), believable and/or forshadowed plot elements.

More diverse music. The music the game had was great, I just got tired of hearing the same piano tune in EVERY dungeon.

I won't go into the optional stuff like the card game (which sucked) because the player wasn't forced to sit through that junk to learn the story.
<SPOILER>
The ending made little to no sense. Let me run it by you in simpler terms than they gave it to you in the game. "Ultimecia wants to compress time...because...she can! So the big plan is this: We allow Ultimecia to compress time...and then beat her up!" Ever see the movie Ghostbusters? There's a part in the beginning in a library. Peter claims to have a plan and intructs his colleagues to follow him as they sneak up behind the ghost. When they get close, Peter merely shouts, "Get her!" and lunges forward - through the apparition which then flips out and goes all stop-motion on their scientific asses. This is essentially the same plan, only in FFVIII it works out - "Thank you deus ex machina!" *smiles, cocking head to one side and looking into the camera; teeth twinkle*
<END SPOILER>

But I said I wasn't going to talk about the plot. The world was not as immersive as most other games I've played. There was never a reason to linger around any town for longer than you had to.
Trading magic amongst your teammates was cumbersome yet necessary. Many times a character you may not have been using much is forced into your party by a story event, but they won't last the night until you get your Junction on.
Possible solution: grant the characters not in-use a level gain based on an average of the highest levels of the in-use characters. Like VII had. Actually, I can't remember if VIII had this or not. If it did, maybe it was the moster leveling that tripped me up, since the monster LVs were based on the average highest LVs in your party.

Oh and the plot promised to have a political undertone in the outset of the game what with the whole SeeD thing, but that just kinda fell by the wayside when Edea showed up (Edea recieved ZERO development). The game would have been much more enjoyable for me if you had kept receiving SeeD missions (and maybe even, I don't know, completing some of them?) like assasinating political VIPs, or guarding shipments of valuable materials, or protecting political VIPs from assasination, the list could go on....

And last: STABILIZE THE SeeD RANKINGS!! I tried my damndest to haul ass to the mission objective to prove somehow that I was a good soldier only to have my SeeD ranking (and my salary) decrease. Then later...milling about with no goal in mind...it inexplicably rises. I saved, turned the PSX off, and couldn't bring myself to play it for two days. What the hell? Am I dense, or was the SeeD ranking system just really elusive?

Well, I think that's all I have to complain about the game (I also think that's everything IN the game). So I'll close this by saying that all-in-all despite all these shortcomings I really, really despised Final Fantasy VIII. But it could have been good. It had potential. Utterly squandered potential.