Ooh my, this is more of a question of different opinions, not so much as the gaming quality... Personally, I wouldn't even go and compare them since all the games are so different. FFVIII was just simply so out there... If you think of it the same way (straightforward) as FFVII or IX, it'll just be like a creation of a 10 year old kid, sure. But when you add such things as the R=U theory, it suddenly gets a whole lot more interesting. That pure logics that everything wouldn't so happy ending-like at least facinates me, though I myself might be "out there", too. My opinion is that either the people at Square were really cunning or simply extremely LUCKY. But for its "mystical" atmosphere, FFVIII was more than just finger muscle work for me. It actually raised some interesting thoughts, for example of time-paradoxes and time. Something that a game very rarely does...