Does ff8 deserve the hate?

I think a lot of the hate comes from the fact that the characters are very noticeably, in their personalities, teenagers. That's not really true of many other games in the series, even if the ages are the same.
So given that I was in my teens when I played it, I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. But when I replay it now, I just can't find myself liking the characters as much as in other games.
 
The draw magic thing was a pain to get used to at first but once you play through it a few times you learn to adapt a good way of getting around it is to get the Magic RF abilitites learned fast. I always started in Balamb Island getting lightning water magic RF learned for Quezacoatl and then grinded on Fastitocalons on the beach they drop water crystals and you can quickly get 100 water spells to junction to your characters stats. The game offered more variety and different ways to play but it does have a steep learning curve.

The orphanage thing was iffy but I remember disliking Squalls rescuing of Rinoa in space much worse very very sappy I couldn't wait for all the mini bosses in the ragnarok to show up and break up the awkward scene.
FF VIII's biggest strength over all the other Final Fantasies for me is its setting the game feels like the most realistic of any of the Final Fantasy worlds. Its justs feels more epic and you feel more there in the world with the characters it also has the best music of the series bar Squalls parties' standard battle theme. I think myself personally I also really connected with Squall at the time and still do.

In short it has its flaws absolutely but I do some of the critiscism toward is OTT I preferred it to VII & IX in the PSOne era myself though VII & IX were both very good games in their own right too.
 
Nope, I love this game. It's one of my favourites along with X and IX. I like the draw and junction system and I liked that enemies levelled up with you because it made the game easy to reply in multiple different ways. The card game is one of the best minigames if not the best minigame in any ff game I've played. I lve the story, though I won't say it's not without its faults. I didn't like the whole orphanage thing and growing up together but forgetting and somehow managing to all meet up again and be a team? All the kids from the orphanage? It was just too coincidental. I do also wish we'd known a bit more about the villain, I wish there'd been hidden pieces of information about her motives in her castle at the end that you could find. That would have been cool.
 
I just took up FF8 after finishing 7, and never got further then somewhere in the beginning of disc 2 back when I was young.
Not because was difficult, I just thought there was no Final Fantasy feel to it for me.

So yeah it may deserve a little hate, but maybe once I get further now - I will disagree with this later ;)
 
The hate is only because it followed VII. Same way everyone hated Nolan's last Batman because it wasn't Dark Knight. VIII is fantastic, gameplay is just as enjoyable as it's predecessor but the graphics are leaps and bounds better.
 
Sheechiibii said:
I do also wish we'd known a bit more about the villain, I wish there'd been hidden pieces of information about her motives in her castle at the end that you could find. That would have been cool.
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Yes totally agree with this finding information on her own past and whatnot would have been excellent! If VIII ever gets a remake (which I doubt unfortunately )
it would be something I would love to see added to the game
 
I actually loved the game. Think much of the story is misunderstood. I loved the whole time travel stuff and the dreams sections. Also, I have even noticed that many do not even understand the plot. I like the fact that the characters stopped looking like something from Mario Brothers as well. Unfortunately 9 went back to that look. Also loved the junction system and GFs. Only issue is that Zell's limit breaks were over powered. Other than that the story was very complex and enjoyed it. Trust me, it takes a few play throughs to appreciate the story and understand the theme.
 
Koloth said:
I actually loved the game. Think much of the story is misunderstood. I loved the whole time travel stuff and the dreams sections. Also, I have even noticed that many do not even understand the plot. I like the fact that the characters stopped looking like something from Mario Brothers as well. Unfortunately 9 went back to that look. Also loved the junction system and GFs. Only issue is that Zell's limit breaks were over powered. Other than that the story was very complex and enjoyed it. Trust me, it takes a few play throughs to appreciate the story and understand the theme.
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Agree so much, alot of complaints about the game, are misunderstood.

  • Ulti is a random boss that appears out of nowhere. No she's there, since CD 1, the very first CD. She's just within Edea's body, and using Edea like a puppet/ tool for her evil plans. The speech at the parade was hers, it was Ulti speaking to everybody in Deling City. It was Ulti who stabbed Squall with that ice spear, the ordering of the missiles to destroy the Gardens, the using of Seifer, the using of Edea and Rinoa's body.



  • The Orphange plot-twist is a random and stupid ass-pull. No again, the game mentions that Guardian Forces cause problems and huge memory problems and the reports that they are dangerous. Though Cid gives the order to use the Guardian Forces. Irvine even mentions that he remembers everything and hence why he had a very, very understanding breakdown at the parade at Deling. He didn't want to shoot, what he considers to be his mom.



  • Rinoa is a weak female character and she's not like Tifa or Yuna. [ she's annoying, she's annoying damsel ] I don't know, if you were a naive and sheltered seventeen pretty normal seventeen year old teenage girl, that wanted to prove to everybody that she can actually do things and be strong and she's not just semi-abusive dad's little princess, and she actually wanted to go out there and show her semi-abusive dad that she can actually do things, but ended up being caught up in a very serious war and teamed up with trained soldiers and you can't back away, you don't realize until the parade that you have caught yourself up on some serious shit, and you were being naive, so you still try and stay tough and not breakdown and fight- but then you end up becoming a sorceress, and you end up becoming one of the most hated people in the world and everybody's idea is to send you up into space, alone, with just your thoughts- how stable would you be ? You wouldn't, you'll be nutty. Yes, she's naive, though most seventeen years olds are. Yes, she needs to be saved alot, though she's not a solider. She's had very little training, if any at all. I mean how smart was Squall when he went into space to go and try and save a dying Rinoa ? He was extremely stupid, he only survived by pure fucking luck. Rinoa makes some dumb choices, though so does everybody.



  • Everything after CD 1 gets too strange/ weird- It's called Final FANTASY, and in CD 1 everybody seems to have the same dream about a clumsy goof named laguna and there's a witch going on the local news, to speak about her evil plans. This is not normal. Since when have you watched the news and seen, oh say Obama make a deal with a witch that does ice magic ??? Never, because it's fantasy, like all of the CD chapters of the game.



  • The Draw/ Junction system is terrible. Disagree. I found the searching the world for magic and fighting and running away from monsters and collecting magic to be really fun. Creating the weapons is fun too. The only problem with it imo is that it's not noob friendly. Yes is easily breakable, though you have that choice on whether you want to be overpowered at the end of CD 1 or just take things normally or not. Just like how the game gives you a option to make the game harder by leveling up. It gives the player choice. It's only a dreadfully awful system if you are new to the table.
 
I don't think the game deserves the hate at all. It's unique in the series, so it's certainly going to be polarizing, but of course coming on the heels of VII it's never been given a fair shake and was dismissed from the start. The junction system is extremely interesting (not perfect, but certainly compelling and intricate in its own way), the music is great, and the story is really interesting, given the multiple plot threads with Laguna/Squall and co.

Personally I really liked it. It's flawed, but no more so than any other general Final Fantasy game. And in my opinion Ultimecia is one of the best and most interesting and scariest villains in the series.
 
Does it deserve the hate? No, definitely not. That said, if you didn't like it... You didn't like it.

Like FF XII when it first came out, FF VIII's reception was certainly polarizing amongst the fans. But there's nothing about the game that would deserve any hate, in my opinion.

I think most of the negativity around the game had a lot to do with the story. And not that it wasn't easily understood, but more to do with the whole Sci-Fi theme of time travel and causality, as well as it's departure from the "traditional" staples that fans came to expect in a final fantasy game, especially the battle system.

In all, I loved everything about the game, including the the whole Sci-Fi genre of time travel and time causality.
 
I usually put FFVII as the my least fav. FF game out of all the numbered titles. I personally dislike more in this game; the story, GF, junctions, characters (with a few expections); than any other FF game. This being said I would rather be stuck playing VIII the rest of my life than 90% of all the games out there. I have no issue in leveling my judgement or criticism on it, if people view that as hating I really don't care anymore.
 
I didn't hate FFVIII at all. The junction system was prohibitive and the designs weren't the best but other than that it was actually pretty ok for me.
 
This game doesn't deserve hate. In fact, I think people hated it because it was the first ff game to not contain a colorful cartoony, playful world and instead took on a more serious tone with kids involved in war in a magical world that seemed more similar to our reality.

People hated Squall for being an angsty teenager, even though I feel like he and cloud were kind of similar attitude wise, his was just younger an immature.

I agree that the story was a tad wacky, but no matter how close to realism it gets its still an FF game. Like, th orphanage thing surprised me as much as the other ridiculous ff revelations. One thing I hate was the romance though. While everything else plot related was explained the whole romantic theme came out of left field...but then again that's how most brief teen relationships start, minus the magic and wars and everything trying to kill you and stuff.

I understand the junction system feeling tedious, however this ff in particular clearly does not push the drawing system on players, and even offers magic refining abilities, which makes the game much easier from the get go and magic farming near pointless. I feel like the system was more about strategy than anything. Don't want to use all those full lives? Fight to keep your party alive o use phoenix downs instead. I'm not saying the system was the best but it certainly gave players tons of playstyle choices, which I loved exploring through countless replays. It was a system that, encouraged grinding to level gfs instead of characters for once. It was an attempt to try something new and i like its attempt better than ff13s which put far more limits on characters than anything else. I honestly can't understand people who hate the junction system unless they were terribly bad at rpgs or were new to them. Grinding was definitely a thing back then.

I like FF8 as a whole and it definitely wasn't the best or the worst of the series. It's severely underrated because people got lazy or it wasn't cartoony enough or didn't have buster swords. It doesn't deserve the hate it gets. None of the ff games deserve hate. I like to think each game has really good points(thirteendoesn'texistshutupnope).
 
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