Quote Originally Posted by Flying Arrow View Post

Worst: The fourth disc (minus awesome final castle). I can endure terrible plot twists and shaky characterization, but I absolutely hate when exploration-heavy RPGs cut off access to locations as the game winds down. Once you go through Time Compression or whatever it is, everything feels very empty. There really is only one thing to do but I like being able to do everything up to the final boss, leave and do some shopping in my favourite town, and then come back for a world-ending fight. Is it so much to ask? FFIX has this cop-out too, but not to the extent VIII does. (PS: I know why they do it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck for me as a player)
It bugged me too; you were basically forced to enter the Castle with not much else to do sidequest wise. Wasn't it due to memory limitations of the disc though? Having to store all the pre-rendered backgrounds of every single city, town and cavern onto one disc (disc 4) would've been impossible. Still though, I get what you mean