Final Fantasy VIII

I’m beginning to understand that my taste for games in the Final Fantasy series swing more towards those on the underrated side. Not only that, but my fondness for those that are highly regarded wavers and is yet to be determined. Of the games I’ve played (disregarding those from Final Fantasy IX onwards), I really enjoy Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VIII, two of the more underrated games in the series (and divisive, in the case for Final Fantasy VIII). On the other end for those that are highly regarded, including Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy IV, I really only have a strong attachment to Final Fantasy VI. For the purposes of this blog, this is the ideal outcome if I could have chosen one.

Looking ahead for the games I have yet to play in the series, how the games are regarded varies significantly. From my perspective, those that are typically highly regarded include Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy X. Those receiving low review scores and poor reception typically include Final Fantasy XIII. And then you have the others, which are loved by many but just as often loathed to the point of considered the worst of the Final Fantasy games. These include Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy XII, Lightning Returns, and Final Fantasy XV. I have played four and finished two of the seven titles listed in this paragraph. I view these games favorably, but haven’t played any of them for at least ten years, some going back to high school. How I view them now could be completely different. If I take my reception of the first eight games in the series and assume the trend will continue, it will be very interesting to see how I enjoy and rank the later games in the series. I’m personally looking forward to all of them.

The point was already made above, but I will reiterate: I really enjoyed Final Fantasy VIII. I went into the game with mixed thoughts and ideas. Growing up, Final Fantasy VIII seemed to get disregarded and shamed when compared to its PlayStation brethren Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX. Articles and reviews I would read dismissed its story and characters and criticized the battle system as clunky, broken, and overall too difficult to use. However in recent years I began to see more people putting Final Fantasy VIII in a positive light, and praising the battle system for being unique and innovative. All I knew when starting up the game was that the battle system was one that incentivized the player to take time to learn, and that the plot took place in a more modern civilization bordering on the future.

I had originally typed out over a page worth of thoughts on the evolution of the Final Fantasy games from I through VIII from a technological and societal impact. However I decided those thoughts would best be laid out in a separate blog post, independent of this blog post. I’m not sure if that writing will ever be published on here.

As explained in my previous blog post, the version of Final Fantasy VIII played was the Remastered version on my Switch. Besides updated textures and graphics, this provided me two large benefits over some of the previous games I played. First was that being the Remaster, I was able to play at 3X speed. This was a huge boon, and made drawing magic simplistic and enjoyable. Running through the hallways of schools or dungeons was no longer a slog. If there was any downside to the 3X speed, it was being so fast that I still had to pay attention. What I mean is that at normal speed it was slow enough to be able to watch a YouTube video or read some articles online, yet boring enough that I wish I could speed it up. At 3X speed battles and drawing were lightning quick, but meant that looking away at a distraction resulted in getting hit by an enemy or characters waiting for inputs. I’m not complaining about the speed increase, it’s just an observation.

The other benefit to the version I played was the portability of the Switch. I love playing Final Fantasy games on the TV, but really enjoyed being able to play it on a handheld when the TV was occupied or when lying in bed. The only issue with playing on the TV is losing headphone capability. I really wish the Switch Pro Controller had a headphone jack port like on the Dualshock 4. Even though I might not have enjoyed some Final Fantasy games as much as others, I believe all Final Fantasy music should be heard at the best quality possible; which for me is with headphones. My TV has good audio output, but music tends to be much louder and not as clear as headphones. Plus I have a train that runs behind our home about 200 feet away, passing by every few minutes.

Speaking of music, Final Fantasy VIII really surprised me. Like other aspects of the game I wasn’t expecting much, but I would say I really enjoyed almost all of the music in the game. Only two tracks I can remember were as good as the rest, one of which was played while piloting the Ragnarok. It felt very repetitive, and made me want to land that much sooner. The other was the Deling City track. It’s a good song; I won’t argue that it’s bad. However it’s even more repetitive than the airship theme. I was annoyed to be forced to listen to it again and again while trekking through the city for various quests. For the length of time it took me to map out Deling City in my mind (not even including the sewers), I could have used either a different song or an extended version of that track.

The characters and story in Final Fantasy VIII I also enjoyed for the most part. Although I feel like some characters lacked depth and wish I knew more about them because most of the cast felt essential to the plot. Obviously Squall is important, and for the most part he was written well and stayed true to his archetype throughout. He stays vitally important to the story and is fleshed out until the credits roll. After him the characters are still interesting but lack a good arc, save Laguna. I like Rinoa and the role she plays alongside Squall and Seifer, but would have liked even more information about her for how important she becomes. Seifer starts off strong, yet feels like another Aerith who disappears halfway through the game after he’s under Edea’s control. Quistis seems important at the beginning of the game but is quickly dismissed as a vital part of the team. I didn’t use her much so maybe I missed some of her conversation pieces. Zell has some good moments especially when in his hometown. I liked how people reacted differently when he was in the party and gave a neat background behind the bumbling student that everyone saw at school. Selphie and Irvine were two of the more weakly portrayed characters with very little background given. For the importance Selphie plays as a transfer from a school without Guardian Forces, and Irvine as the non-amnesiac plot pusher, they really didn’t get enough screen time. I had both in my party pretty often as the third leg and still didn’t get much dialog with them. Finally there’s Edea and Cid. Edea comes full circle in the story, possibly the most interesting character in the game. Her arc is completely fleshed out, well beyond those found in a Squaresoft game at that time, and the story took me off-guard. I was pretty surprised to have her added to the team and really wanted to keep playing to see where it was going. It’s one thing to add a character like Magus to the team, yet another thing entirely to add to the party what is viewed to be the only antagonist in the game. I’m sure it had been done multiple times in RPGs before Final Fantasy VIII, but I had yet to see it in a Final Fantasy game. Except maybe Golbez in Final Fantasy IV, but by the time the player realizes who the actual antagonist is they also understand Golbez is not the real enemy; the same cannot be said for Edea. Cid however, never gets his story finished in my opinion. I never really decided whether he should be considered a good guy, or a pawn that couldn’t face the reality of the eventual future and danger he’s putting others, children even, into. Did I miss some plot wrapping up his story?

I’m not forgetting the non-main cast. I give the developers credit for how Laguna, Kiros, and Ward were introduced in the story, to the confusion of the player. My first thought was I missed some story or a quest somewhere. These guys were strange but I wanted to know more. Originally I figured their story was taking place elsewhere on the planet and were sharing minds somehow, but it didn’t take long until I started questioning the ‘when’ of their story. Forward or backwards in time, that I wasn’t sure of for a while. The slow reveal of the fate of each of these characters was one of the more enjoyable stories in a Final Fantasy game up to this point, behind only Final Fantasy VI. The eventual meeting between Squall and Laguna was an overall great scene that made me both happy, and excited for the story to push towards its final chapter. It was only made better by the ending credits cut scene, fully wrapping up Laguna’s story. Which was much better than simply seeing a far future Red XIII looking onwards with his family.

The story isn’t perfect though. I have a major grievance with how the story wrapped up. I’m a sucker for time travel. I love time travel in all sorts of media. As mentioned in the last blog post, Chrono Trigger is my favorite game. Another of my favorite games in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I really enjoy Doctor Who, and Interstellar is one of my favorite movies. Some of my favorite book series involve time travel. For me, if one is going to include time travel in a story, then it must be kept simple, or based around science and logic. People have found flaws in the time travel with all of my previous examples, but for the most part they’re either sound in their implementation or simple enough to look past the errors. I cannot look past the time loop in Final Fantasy VIII. I’ve even gone online to see what other people think, and I do not agree with Edea having used compressed time to sidestep a potential plot hole. When Edea passes her powers down, the compressed time won’t matter once time decompresses. The loop will start again. The game tries to argue that she uses compressed time to avoid the loop, but I just don’t see it working that way. My problem with a time loop isn’t just missing an ending; it means a beginning technically never existed either. I don’t like paradoxes like that, especially in video games which are supposed to have a clear ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ which take place at some interval in the world timeline. I still really enjoy the story Final Fantasy VIII, but I let out a long sigh during the scene of the powers being passed down. It’s going to keep bugging me, but I can forgive it to remember the enjoyment I got out of the game.

And I sure did enjoy the Junction system. Yes I can agree that it took some time to understand (tutorials were so long). But the functionality of the system was pretty robust, yet simple. I don’t see why people found it so complicated. Instead of having MP, the player draws magic from the enemy, and can later use said magic the amount of ‘draws’ they have. Not a difficult concept. Maybe it doesn’t seem so complicated because I already played through Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy III, both of which also have a system of using magic ‘charges’ instead of a general MP pool. Final Fantasy VIII seemed like an advanced version of the magic system found in those two games. It’s crazy that I didn’t realize the similarities until I was writing this. I was not a fan of the magic system from those two games, but Final Fantasy VIII seemed much more generous to the player. The ability to store 99 of a spell, and the ease to which the player can acquire necessary spell ‘draws’ makes the game much more playable than its antiquated predecessors.

I’m normally already attracted by acquiring all of the summons and special weapons in Final Fantasy games, yet being able to obtain more junctionable abilities from the Guardian Forces kept me exceptionally interested. I spent much more time in the menus of the game than most of the previous entries in the series because I was continually fooling around with the junctions for optimal set-ups on each character. I skipped a large amount of the abilities because I didn’t find them useful to my play style, yet I appreciate the options given to the player; I spent a minimal amount of time refining magic, items, or cards. I can see how the game could have a large amount of replayability, and fun self-restricted playthroughs.

Difficulty-wise, I mostly lean towards the game being on the easier and fairer side. However I have two gripes that I feel should be discussed. First is that I do not like enemies scaling alongside the player. This had a direct effect on not only boss battles and the abilities they use, but also the acquisition of certain spells. I’m already a player who typically shies away from games with a scaling system, and wasn’t aware of this heading into Final Fantasy VIII. It wasn’t until around level 25 or so that I learned how the player’s level has an effect. Thankfully I had the junction ability to avoid random battles, which I am extremely grateful for. Honestly, more RPGs should have the option to turn off or avoid random battles. Logically it may not make sense in some game worlds, but is appreciated to choose when to level. Anyways, using this ability I greatly reduced my experience earned, but unfortunately was unable to avoid passing the level 30 threshold that I read about online. Most games in the series reward the player for repeatedly defeating enemies and gaining experience points, but it feels like in this game the player is penalized for battling and grinding too much. And for how much grinding for spell drawing (without refining), it’s almost unfair to penalize the killing of enemies and rewarding experience points. I turned most enemies into cards, but that took up an ability spot on a character, and didn’t necessarily stop an enemy from accidently being killed. Maybe there was another skill that reduced all experience gained down to zero that I missed?

My other frustration came from the final boss battle. Not only was it difficult, but the party was randomly split up. This was a major headache because I had not given Guardian Forces to half of the characters. These characters were almost useless in the battle, and were basically damage sponges for the short amount of time they were alive. Had I known going into the battle how things would play out, I might have changed the Guardian Force and junction compositions. But there’s no way to know about this besides being told beforehand, or fighting the battle and dying. Neither of those is very fair. And no matter how the player sets up their team, the characters coming out during the battle is still random, to my knowledge. To top it all off, it’s a final battle in a Final Fantasy game, so of course it’s both long and there are multiple forms with no indication of the end. I beat it on my first try but was only out of sheer luck. Most of the characters died quickly and I didn’t even spend turns reviving them. The majority of the fight basically came down to Squall and Rinoa, one doing damage and the other throwing out defenses and Haste. At one point Rinoa died and Squall was just about to be killed, and the RNG gods smiled upon me by calling in Angelo for the just-in-time revival. Another time Angelo came in and I was excited to receive aid, and what did he do? Searched for treasure and found a Hi-Potion for Rinoa. Gee, what a good boy. The fight dragged on with too many forms, and ultimately was a letdown for the game, if only for the amount of frustration and powerlessness I felt throughout the battle. I guess the joy I felt watching the boss finally fall partially made up for the pain.

So that about brings me to the end of the game, and the end of my thoughts as well. I had a great time with the majority of the game. Good story, good cast of characters, a fun battle system, and pretty good music to go along with it. I would highly recommend anyone who it’s into RPGs to play through it, especially if they want to see what the Final Fantasy developers can do to take the series in a different direction. As usual, I have added the game to my rankings list, here is how they now stand:

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy

The game ranks pretty high on my list, which was a bit of a surprise when I started to question where it would go. It just barely sits above Final Fantasy V, but those top three are well above the rest. I would say Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy IV make up the next tier, and could swap positions being they are polar opposite games. Then the last tier has the bottom three games. I admit Final Fantasy VII is much better than the other two, but still deserves to be in the “poor” tier instead of “good”.

From here on out, things will be a bit more interesting. I’ve played a large amount of Final Fantasy IX, and have beaten Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. If my feelings stay the same as they were when I played/beat them over a decade ago, they will all rank near the top. I wonder though if Final Fantasy X and its sequel are too linear for my tastes these days? And I don’t know how I will feel about the sphere grid after playing Final Fantasy games with more freedom for leveling and job class choice? I look forward to playing every game in the series from here on out, and I imagine will have a much easier time putting my thoughts down and posting them.