FFVIII's Bad Reputation.

I enjoyed playing FFVIII, but part of it came from the fact that I kept expecting people like Zell, Selphie and Quistis to get a little more depth. I was disappointed in the end when it still all resolved around Rinoa and Squall.

Part of what I love about FF is that every game has many characters and though the main-characters (main couple mostly) can be a bit generic, the other characters are usually a lot more original.

Hence I didn't like FFVIII as much as I thought I would.
 
Umm...I really wanted to see a Love Triangle between Squall, Rinoa and Seifer...and Zell, Quitis Irvine and Selphie sort of dissapeared as the gmae went on...and I didn't like the idea of drawing...and junctioning...a whole lotta fuss, if you ask me.

But who doesn't love Liberi Fatali!!?? That song is AWESOME.
 
Everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess but I really like ff8. I can play it and have got to Ultemicia soooo I think the game is good. I don't even mind the story, I think the way each disc finishes is good as well, the only bad point I can think of is Ultemicia and not really knowing much about her, oh and the end where you can't go back to do things when you're at Ultimecias castle.
 
I've played FFVIII over a dozen times, completed all the side-quests -- including Omega Weapon -- and I don't mind playing it again. It's a great game, with a great story, and a great deal of emotion. However, Ultimecia's ambiguous origin sort of let me down.

And of course the Junction and drawing systems never really clicked with me.
 
people hated cause its a radical change in the game mode, you love it, or you hate it, most of the ones who liked it like me played it before playing other titles of the saga.
the main characters have the big part of the deal, and the "patners" dont have much to do, but if the damn logo present the two main characters, what do you expect?
it change a lot of things, i prefer that, to have a ff7 clone like all expect.
 
I'll be a happier person if they didn't veer away from the traditional Final Fantasy-style battles. I got the game, started it, saw the battles and quickly, i decided to put it aside for Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSP.

Only later i resisted the dislike and went back to it. The story's great, i must admit. And everything else too isn't bad. For that age, the characters looked pretty real, and the physics are quite okay.

So, left with only the battle system. However, i didn't really think it had such a bad reputation though.
 
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The battles are pretty similar in the way that you have your random battles, and magic is used in the same way, as are summons, and character turns being taken. I guess you mean the junctioning side of things? Just a different way of like, training characters and what not. Materia in VII, spell learning off summons in VI, job learning in V - just another method of using abilities and such.

I loved junctioning, though sometimes it seemed a chore just trying to get rarer spells. I never used much magic in battles anyway, so I didn't have to worry about the characters stats going down.

It has horrible main cast though, their backgrounds are as dull as dishwater, except for Squall who has a more interesting past.
 
This being my favorite final fantasy game, I disagree with what most people don't like. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't understand where they're coming from. I just don't see it as necessarily a downside to the game. Those are just ways it could be improved. I notice that if I view a game more so as a story, what can be improved, where do things need to be clarified, where is it too repetitive, etc. then games don't seem nearly as bad, and then you can see where they would have improved.
On that basis, FFVIII could have been even better if they had given the other main characters more background, elaborated more on the main villain earlier in the story, and come up with more original plotlines and twists. However, the game was still amazing, the battle system, although difficult to learn, once acquired came quite easily, and was an overall wonderful addition ot the series.
 
I love FFVIII, it's the first one I saw being played. I understand why people hate Rinoa, I don't hate her as such, but she does get slightly annoying at times.
 
I think it was the best of all the ff's due to the fact that it was so different from everything else.... The gameplay was changed drastically it broken that cartoon barrier surrounding ffvii as for the characters and the storyline it is like EKIATOS said with the characters as the symbol what do you expect. FF8 was the first one i played and i think that is the reason i like it so much because it stands out. If i played other titles first i believe i wouldnt have liked it so much
 
Artemicion said:
I think alot of people dislike the junction system, and the fact you had to draw magic - too time consuming and fiddly. I have to admit, drawing 100 of each spell got really annoying. And it also made using magic quite useless because if you had it juncioned, using the junctioned magic would affect that particular stat. Being a non-magic user it didn't bother me one bit but I can see why other people would really HATE that :wacky:

A whole STACK of people hate Rinoa and her whole damsel in distress status
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Agh, Drawing. I despise Drawing.

About Rinoa, though--I think most of the female FF leads have that going on. There's always a part in every FF game where the girl gets kidnapped because [pick one: some pervert wants her for himself / the enemy finds her a threat / some creepy scientists wants to perform experiments on her]. It's a rule at this point, I think.
 
charliepanayi said:
I think one problem FFVIII had is it had to follow up FFVII, which was the most famous and popular entry in the series. Any game that came next was always going to suffer in comparison (I prefer FFVIII, but I just mean it suffers coming after FFVII's fame). Elements like the junction system and especially Squall and Rinoa's story tended to polarise people as well. Some loved these things, some hated them. Hell, I know some people who love FFVIII but don't like Rinoa XD

It is very much the 'Marmite' game of the series.
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Very well said. I actually am not all that much of a fan of Rinoa either, especially her dog... and it's head-butt attacks. Ay...

I am never bothered when people dislike something I like, but what really agitates me is when people say it 'sucks' because of this and that. Most people don't list constructive criticism, only point out things that they dislike/hate, which doesn't make anything crap, of poor quality, or unworthy. (Whether it's a videogame, book or movie.)

A lot of people seem to dislike FFVIII because it's not what they want in a game, there are elements that they don't want or dislike, even hate. Because it doesn't satisfy them. Fair enough... to each their own.
 
i agree that ff8 is disliked by many because of its junctioning and drawing abilities, which i didnt mind. as for characters, from what i heard from ff players is that, the characters werent special enough especially the main. i've played ff7-ffx and upon beating the game for the first time, this was going through my mind about the protagonist as they discover a little about their past....
ffVII - so cloud is a clone of sephiroth??
ffIX - so zidane is a vessel creaded by garland??
ffX - so tidus is actually a dream created by the fayth??
and then there was
ffVIII - so squall is actually normal??
i guess most people were hoping for a bigger twist or something and squall didnt have that. he wasnt a clone, a vessel, or a dream....he was real. he wasnt enhanced or created in any other way, other than the real way of bringing life. he wasnt, as some might say, special at all. to me, being the only ff protagonist to use the gunblade, while every other ff protagonist is using a sword, is special enough for me. btw, my playing order was ffVIII, ffIX, ffVII, ffX, then ffVIII again because i thought squall was a bit too real that i might've missed something about him.
 
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And that's what I like about FFVIII- I don't think a main character NEEDS to have a twist. Yes, it's good to discover things that you weren't expecting about the main character, but I think this also happens in this one, because you find out about the links between all of the characters, you need all of the characters you have to make the story work, whereas with other stories I think that the main character is treated in a very stand alone way. I think that Squall is special. He's human, and he's protrayed that way. Other characters in other stories have their little twists, Squall does too. Squall's journey is what makes him who he is, and the fact that he is human is one of his greatest aspects, and also one of his greatest flaws. I don't think that this is any better than the other games, but I think it is as good (I don't think I have a favourite FF game), but I think that one of the main expectations from a game with "fantasy" in the title is that the main character is something other than human. FFVIII proves that you don't need a character to be of a different species, or related to a different species etc. That's one of the fun things in the other games- the different species etc, but I don't think that they make the game. The game is made by their personalities

And as for the drawing system, I think that people find it difficult because they are used to a specific type of fight system. Different FF games make for experimentation with different fight systems. There is the obvious traditional system, then there are more experimentational systems, like the draw system here, the sphere system in FFX and the live system in FFXII. I don't prefer any to another, I think that they are all good once you get the hang of them.
 
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