I liked the story of FF8 a lot. The characters were interesting, and all that lovely jazz. Good story, for sure, interesting art style, and a couple of really good twists.

But it will never be as good as FF7 or FFTactics (original).

The main thing about FF8 is to prepare yourself for an obsolutely HORRID battle system. Then, if you like it or can tolerate it, you will have been ready for that. Personally, it is extremely difficult for me to replay FF8 because of the battle system.

Also, there is no point to leveling up, just learn new abilities. AND FOR GOODNESS´ SAKE: get strength bonus as soon as possible and leave it on squall for the rest of the game. Ifrit has this crazy good ability which allows you to gain an extra point of strength every level. Theoretically, if you got the ability at level 20, you would get 80 extra points of strength. That is ridiculous.

By the way, FFX was a good FF as well. Good choices for your top two, but I you owe it to yourself to play FFT if you haven´t.