Originally posted by Silent Warrior
Now, I can live with people appreciating FF8, but a simple fact of life is that Planescape Torment is ten times the RPG FF8 is.
Planescape: Torment is indeed an excellent game. Your post makes me want to reinstall it and actually attempt to complete the thing this time around.

However, i'm not sure there's any easy way to compare the two. Planescape is a much more traditional, deep D&D-styled adventure, on a different level than Final Fantasy's more progressive and simplified storytelling. The former centers around direct and personal character development, from class to alignment to the actual flow of the storyline. The latter, though, sets most of those in stone from the beginning, instead carrying the player through a set storyline while watching the characters grow and change. Planescape is about direct and influential player activity, whereas Final Fantasy is more akin to an extremely interactive movie.

For any hardcore roleplayer, it's likely that Planescape is far more interesting than the linear, story-centric Final Fantasy series. But for some folks, good story trumps that huge personal involvement any day of the week. They're both achieving different goals, and for different audiences.

Which, by the way, is FF8's trouble. Despite the game's inherent reliance on storytelling and characters, the storytelling and characters aren't as strong as they could be. Many of them are unfortunately expendable; the game would not have changed had some other character taken his or her place. This isn't the case with, say, FF7, for which a good handful of the charaters are active, dynamic and essential to the main plot. Other folks have covered this well enough, so i'll leave it at that.

Despite that, i enjoyed FF8. i really did. It just wasn't my favorite.