You're Wrong!

[ThroneofDravaris]

Why the hell would she want to compress time? She could destroy herself doing that you know. That's the thing. And Ultimecia has No background. We have theories. ONLY THEORIES. She is one big plothole.
And most FFs don't have so many plotholes like FFVIII.
And Squall starts to love Rinoa with no true reason. And this isn't truly explained in the game. Zidane and Garnet love each other since the beginning, and it is pretty clear to understand. Even if you don't Eiko makes a good explanation of that to Vivi.

Hehe, I think we should assume that Ultimecia knew that she wasn’t going to be consumed as well during Time Compression. As I said, my theory is that Time Compression would make Ultimecia everything, everywhere, at every time. Basically, she would have become the Universe…if that makes sense…meh, it makes sense to me (must have made sense to Primus Inter Pares as well, since it’s a derivative of one of his theories…). Ultimecia is not the only FF antagonist we know nothing about. Chaos, Zeomus, X-Death, Necron; nothing much is known about any of these guys. The thing is, all of these games had supplementary antagonists that were developed to a greater extent. For FF8, it was Seifer, more on that later. Really, if you don’t count Time Compression, there aren’t many plot holes in this game, and those that exist are rather easy to fill in (ie, Squall’s father being Laguna). As for love in this game, I think you will have a hard time proving that there was any more reason for Zidane to love garnet than for Squall to love Rinoa. It was hinted at THE ENTIRE way through the game, it was fairly obvious that this was the direction the story was going to take. The only complication was Quistis who loved Squall as well, yet decided tha tit wasn’t truly love later in the game (yes, a bit weak, but what do you want?).

The problem, again, is the material thing. Magic is an energy. It may not exist in the real world, but in games, it is raw spirit energy. A power that can make miracles. FFVIII ruined that. If it was by scrolls and books, like it was (implicit) in the old-school FFs. They used their power to use the magic contained in those scrolls. But FFVIII doesn't give any deep explanation about magic.

Once again, Magic is still an energy in FF8, it’s just been put into different categories. I really don’t see who magic was explained any less clearly in FF8, where in past FF games it was something you could simply BUY FROM SHOPS! And FFIX didn’t exactly have a clear explanation of magic either, it was something you learned from…a stick. Hmmm…So far the best explanation of magic has been in FF6, and that was merely “we get it from magical creatures.”

And Espers are explained in FFVI. Magicite, remeber? They learn Magic and summon Espers using Magicite. The power contained in the Magicite. Espers make sense. Since Guardian Forces don't have a good explanation of what they are, they don't make much of a sense.

In FF6, Espers were magical beings from another dimension. In FF8, GF’s are basically just monsters that can be Junctioned to a human. Unclear? Well yes, but it wouldn’t be the first time that summons weren’t explained (ie all except FF6 and FF10).Really, it’s basically the same deal, it’s just that there is no Magicite that links the human to the summon.

I at least can't see magic by a material thing you can refine from items. That is just idiot and bizzarre. o_o

Err, you mean like Magicite/Materia/Staffs in FFIX? It’s not really a new concept….

Magic, used in battle, is useless. I haven't talked ANYTHING about its another usefulnesses. As you said, magic enhance your stats and limit breaks. This ruined FFVIII to me. Limit Breaks are too overpowered, and they don't make sense as well (Hey! I'm almost dead! But because of some idiot reason I can do 9999 damage 16 times against an enemy now! Hoo-ray!).

The limit break system was based on the same system seen in FF6, ie near death attacks. Really, it’s the same as the system used in FF7 and FFX, you still get the limits from taking damage. The only difference is that you use it straight away, you can’t store it. Meh, sure you could technically pull of a limit break as every attack you every make in this game, but then the bosses were made harder later in the game to compensate ( I’d like to see anyone beat Omega with the attack command!)

Save FFX? Wtf are you talking about? They sometimes even ditch Tidus, in favor of Yuna!
And Edea was very important in the two first discs. They ditched Seifer (not like someone would miss him *shot*) in favor of her, when he is just as bad good as Edea.

In general, I would say that FFX had the most developed supporting characters, they all had their own, rather complex story (I mean come on, it turns out Auron was DEAD). I wouldn’t say that they ditched Seifer in favour of Edea. He maintained his relevance to the plot right up until the end of disk 3 (which, in all actuality, was just before the final dungeon) Regarding Seifer, his purpose is similar to Kuja in FFIX (God, I’ll get flamed for that one). He basically gives you someone to hate for the most part of the game, while the main antagonist stays in hiding until the final battle.

And Quistis, Zell, Irvine and Selphie only had more "screen time" than other characters in other FFs because there are only 6 PCs, as you said. But FFIX has 8 PCs and Eiko, Vivi, Steiner and maybe Quina have much, much more screen time than anyone from FFVIII. And that's because some people say that FFIX is shorter!
And this "whole list" would have too many people from FFVI, if you're talking about PCs.

I don’t really remember any of the characters in FF9 getting any more development than those in FF8. I think this is probably a question of personal perception. Eiko and Amarant don’t really enter the story until halfway through the second disk (and you don’t need to get Quina until the beginning of the second as well), while you get of the characters in FF8 by about three quarters of the way through the first. Plus, you had a shot at controlling Seifer in the beginning as well. As for the list, I would say most of them come from I-V rather than 6…

Hehe, it’s nice to see that people have actually replied to this thread ( I was a bit worried when it passed the 24 hour mark with only one reply…). It would be nice to see some people bash the earlier FF games though, that’s always fun, and not easy to defend either….