Final Fantasy VIII Review by Sky Render Tagline: A game with much potential present, but wasted... Graphics - 6/10 FF8's graphics are not nice to look at. The 3D models, while decent for PS1 faire, are presented at such a distance that they look like vaguely human and highly pixelated shapes in the field and battle. The 2D is a step up from FF7's quality, and clashes less with the 3D than FF7's, but still makes the difference in quality between the 2D and 3D painfully apparent. The FMV's no longer feel like they're a mish-mash of pointless cutscenes in radically different styles, but they still feel disjointed from the rest of the game due to how different they look from the rest of the game. This difference is especially jarring when they randomly use the 3D models overlayed on top of the FMV. Sound and Music - 9/10 One of the best Final Fantasy soundtracks ever, without question. It's the first FF soundtrack to sport orchestrated music in it, and also the first to have such high quality of audio samples for the non-FMV songs. The compositions themselves are also quite impressive, though a few (most notably the card game theme) get annoying pretty fast. The sound effects are what you'd expect, and don't detract from the game. Gameplay - 6/10 Tragically, FF8's gameplay shows signs of potentially being something wonderful, but falls short of this goal by quite a bit. The Draw system, while it sounds interesting in theory (stock up to 100 of each spell, and then junction them to your stats, which then makes you better in combat) is critically flawed by the fact that you can never draw more than 9 of a spell at a time, and that you will frequently get considerably less per Draw. The summons system also has a curious twist in that summons can act as meatshields to protect you from powerful attacks now, and can be boosted in power, but the flaw in this is very obvious: you cannot skip the summon animations, which are INSANELY long. One of them is just short of the length of the infamous Knights of Round summon in FF7. The rest of the battle engine is solid enough, but these two flaws are part of the very heart of the combat engine itself, so it makes battles irritatingly long. Also, since magic is meant for junctioning, you basically never cast any of it, meaning a fairly big part of the engine is sacrificed for another part of it to shine. The leveling system, too, hurts the battle engine. Enemies level up at the same rate that you do, so the game is actually far easier if you never level up at all and just junction good magic to your stats. In contrast, the game becomes nigh-unwinnable if you level up too much, which is pretty much the dead opposite of the RPG norm. It's not necessarily a bad system to implement, but it is a bit counter-productive in the form it takes, since enemies get exponentially better stat boosts than you do at level up. The side-quests and mini-games are mostly decent, though there are some exceptions to this (particularly the required brawler-style minigames late on disc 2 and early on disc 3). Most notably in the "could be great but falls short" category is Triple Triad, the card game in FF8. The default game is actually pretty fun and strategic, and a few of the rules (Elemental and Sudden Death in particular) actually add some appealing depth to it. But many of the other rules (Same, Same-Wall, Combo, Plus, Random, etc.) are very annoying and hard to get rid of. Trading rules can also be irritating, particularly with the evil Direct rule, which causes you to trade whatever cards you flipped with your opponent. Not nice. Triple Triad is optional, of course, but a lot of the best items in the game require you to play it to get them. Outside of battles and sidequests, the gameplay isn't too terribly bad. The load times can be irksome at times, but that's about the worst you suffer during non-battle and non-sidequest gameplay. Story - 6/10 FF8's story took a bit of a nosedive from the series norm, in that it tried (and failed, for the most part) to focus on a budding romance between the lead characters instead of on any sort of world-shattering events. While there still is a definite "must save the world" storyline going on, it takes the back seat to the credibility-straining "relationship" between Squall and Rinoa. Early on, the relationship is very obviously one where Squall is not interested in Rinoa at all, and is mostly annoyed by her. And then, inexplicably, Squall starts to give a damn about her at the end of disc 2, with no rational explanation for it. I can appreciate their desire to veer away from the formulaic "save the world" storyline focus, but they could at least have tried to make the relationship the plot centers around actually believable. The plot outside of that is usually pretty good, though it gets disjointed after a certain very Deus-Ex-Machina scene that occurs close to the end of disc 2. After that, the story feels rushed, as though a deadline were coming up and the developers had to meet it in time and thus decided to can the last half of the script into as small a package as possible. Replay Value - 6/10 If it weren't for the critical flaws in FF8's battle engine, the replay value of this game would be through the roof. The Junction system lets you set up your party in so many ways, it's downright insane. The huge number of summons and skills you can learn (combat and otherwise) also give you plenty to do. The big problem is, those critical flaws in the game engine make replaying the game not sound so appealing, unless you use a cheat device to bypass or nullify them. Overall - 6.5/10 FF8 is purely average, which hurts, since it had such an enormous potential for so much more. But with the Draw system being so tedious, summons being so slow, magic being nulled for value outside of junctioning, and leveling up made a fatalistic practice, FF8 ends up being severely lessened. Pros: + A good system in theory, at least + Excellent soundtrack + Triple Triad is fun when played only with basic rules + Plenty to do and see Cons: - Serious flaws in the gameplay engine make it irritating - The story is lacklustre at best - Triple Triad's nastier rules make the mini-game unplayable in many areas Target Audience: FF fans, mostly. If the systems which are not quite right were better, it'd appeal to fans of turn-based RPG's, too. Buy or Rent? Probably better to rent it, if you still can. FF8's not the kind of game you're likely to play often enough to warrant a purchase.