Final Fantasy VIII (FF8) was my first Final Fantasy. It is also the only one I’ve completed. I’ve played the first one on the NES, and Final Fantasy VII, but neither jived with me. I tend to not like JRPGs and turn-based combat games. For some reason, VIII was able to keep my attention, and I’ve been wanting to revisit it. I finally did. FF8 doesn’t fix the things I hate; it can be grindy and the game is designed around a random number generator. However, it does a lot of interesting things, and has a great story.
Let’s start with some bad things. FF8 can take too long to do things, like combat. Like any JRPG from the era, FF8 involves a lot of wandering around an overworld, and then getting sucked into a separate combat screen. At the start of this transition, the music loads and starts playing. After, the combat scene loads by fading out the overworld and fading in the combat scene. After the scene is loaded, the character models fade in, and they have to a do a little animation to show that they are ready. After defeating enemies, the characters have to dance, and the new music has to play. It has to display a couple of summary screens, and then it finally reloads the overworld. It’s charming at first, but did not take long to grow tiring to me. There are other aspects that take a bit too long. Thankfully, the menus are snappy.
One of the aspects I hate about turned-based combat is the urgency of selecting an action. In FF8, each character in the party can have up to four actions. Many of the actions have sub menus. The “Magic” and “Item” actions can be quite lengthy. Thankfully, those lists are completely sortable, but it is still a lengthy process to find what you are looking for. I wish turn-based combat games just paused when it is my turn. These games want me to strategize, but I better be quick, or I’ll get hit several times. It is annoying, and I dislike it. FF8 alleviates some of this with its junction system. Most of the time, I was either using the “Draw” action, or just using the standard “Attack” action. I’ll get more into that later.
FF8 has a somewhat active combat system, which I always appreciate. Squall can critical hit with well-timed “L1” button press. It feels good, since the animation and sound is different from a standard hit. When characters get low on health, Limit Breaks become an action. These Limit Breaks do massive damage, and usually involve quicktime events to do more damage. They are fun, and satisfying to pull off.
Outside of combat, FF8 has a card game called “Triple Triad.” I usually dislike deck building games. At the beginning of the game, I actually found myself enjoying Triple Triad. However, as I continued through the game, rules kept getting piled on, and Triple Triad just became tedious. The game becomes more about managing rules, then actually playing the game. The Random rule in particular became the bane of my existence. Whoever decided it was a good rule to add to the game can burn in an inferno.
Speaking of random, FF8’s random number generator is annoying, like most randomness. I shit you not, I walked across one small screen and was hit with five random combat encounters. I’ve never hated the transition scenes to combat more. Triple Triad has a particular randomness I found annoying. There is one side quest where you must get the Queen of Cards to move to specific locations after losing to her. If she goes to the wrong location, I had to load a save and try lose to her again until she went to the correct location. Sometimes I got lucky, and she moved to the right location after the first try. One time, it took dozens of tries.
Despite hating several aspects of FF8, I do actually love the game. It balances out the bad with several systems that can be abused to make me feel overpowered. I like this type of power fantasy.
I did not engage with Triple Triad as a kid, so I never realized how delightfully exploitable it can be until my latest playthrough. Cards can be refined into items, and I was able to get some very powerful items early in the game just by obtaining certain cards. I didn’t like playing the game, but I did find some appreciation for it while getting items. I ended up obtaining every card to unlock the RetroAchievement for it.
“Draw” was another mechanic I did not engage with back in the day. Draw is actually pretty important to the game. A successful draw adds magic to your stockpile. FF8 is very generous with success rates. Casting magic sucks, but stocking up on magic is important for the junction system. I was able to assign magic to attributes, like my strength. Doing so, increases those stats or adds elemental resistances/damage. For example, assigning 100 Thunder to Strength, greatly increases the physical attack damage of the character. Abusing this system became a must for me. I just wanted to get in and out of combat as quickly as possible. I ended up doing a little bit of grinding at the beginning to ROFLstomp my way through combat encounters throughout most of the game.
This playthrough reminded me how good the music is in FF8. I took notice of each and every track. Even songs that I encountered often, like “Balamb GARDEN” never lost their luster. Even more than a month later, tracks are still suck in my head. Honestly, FF8 is making me rethink my best video game soundtrack list.
The story and characters are the primary reasons I love FF8. I found myself focused on different aspects as I grow older. As a kid, I enjoyed the “teenagers save the world” aspect of the game. SeeDs are trained to fight and use magic as kids, and are raised to kill the sorceress. Squalls rising as a leader despite his doubts and awkwardness really spoke to me.
With this latest playthough, the love story between Squall and Rinoa really hit me. The love story is entwined with the overall “save the world” story, and it gives the overall story a much needed emotional punch.
There are many jokes about Squall being an emo, but I love him as a character. He’s a teenager forced into leadership. His thoughts are open to the player. He will be asked to make a decision, and his thoughts are panicked. However, he will calmly ask what needs to be done. He will often get stuck in his own head, and isolate himself. He thinks he can’t rely on anyone else. It’s relatable. The other characters (who all have personalities I also love) try to show him that he doesn’t need to be that way. They are there for him.
FF8 has a lot of subtlety within its story. It doesn’t bash you over your head with exposition or explaining every detail to you. Instead, it merely hints at deeper things. For example, Squall doesn’t know who his parents are. It is actually important to the story, but the game only hints at who his mother and father are. The game keeps the fat to a minimum, and let’s your mind fill in the blanks.
FF8 is not a perfect game. It commits many sins that other turn-based games make. However, the junction system is interesting and irons-out some of the weaker aspects of the game. Really, though, the story, characters, and music elevates the game into one of my all time favorites.
