This review was published on 07/06/2013.

Final Fantasy VIII is a role-playing game developed by Square and originally released for the Sony PlayStation in 1999. It's the eighth game in the main Final Fantasy series and the second one on the PlayStation. Final Fantasy VII released to critical acclaim and was a colossal success, quickly becoming the best selling Final Fantasy game of all time. It introduced Full Motion Video, or FMV, into the series and upped the scale of the story. Thanks to the success of Final Fantasy VII, Japanese RPGs became more popular in North America. Final Fantasy VIII continues in that trend by also becoming an immediate success that was well received by critics at the time. However, unlike VII, Final Fantasy VIII was derided many years later by fans for having too many plot holes and gameplay problems. Today, Final Fantasy VIII is considered the worst of the three Final Fantasy games released on the PlayStation. There's a good reason for that.

Final Fantasy VI had a steampunk theme, VII had an industrial theme, and VIII goes full blown sci-fi. Final Fantasy VIII takes place in a futuristic world where technology is very advanced and people wear contemporary clothing. You'll find plenty of fashionable clothing, such as black leather jackets and trench coats. Some of the clothing is less conventional and looks like the sort of thing people of the future would wear. The game also retains fantasy elements like the use of magic and swords. Yes, for whatever reason, people still use swords in the far flung future. The sword underwent a fundamental evolution, though; in the future, swords will be combined with guns to form gunblades. It's quite possibly the stupidest idea ever, but it's also the most awesome thing ever. Awesome things don't always have to adhere to the rules of logic, you know. Most of the military personal in the game straight up use guns, but the cooler characters use the wicked gunblades. This is one of the only games in the series that goes all the way with the sci-fi theme, which is pretty exciting. If you're more of a traditionalist and prefer a strict fantasy theme, then this game isn't for you. However, seeing as how this is a unique theme for the series, I applaud Square for taking this approach.

Squall Leonhart is the protagonist of this tale, and he's a member of Balamb Garden, a military academy that trains its members in the arts of magical warfare. Squall begins the game as a trainee, but he quickly moves up in the ranks and joins SeeD, Balamb Garden's elite mercenary force. The game follows Squall and his comrades as he completes combat missions for Balamb Garden. A lot of the game revolves around Balamb Garden trying to halt military advances of the Galbadia Army, but as usual, things are not as simple as they seem. Something mysterious is secretly happening somewhere, and many discoveries are made as you progress through the game. Final Fantasy VIII has an unusual premise, but it's an interesting one. The problem is that the plot falls apart later on, with tons of plot holes and convoluted nonsense that makes no sense whatsoever. I can't go into details without spoiling anything, but this game has major problems in the story department. It won't seem like that at first, as the story does a good job of holding things together for the early portions of the game. Unfortunately, that doesn't last long. Many questions get brought up, yet few of them get answered. The whole game builds up to something, but that something is ultimately disappointing. It's a shame, because Final Fantasy VIII's plot has a lot of potential, and the FMV shown in the intro makes it seem like this game will have the best plot of all time. It doesn't.

Fights use the tried and true Active Time Battle system first devised in Final Fantasy IV, or ATB for short. All enemies and allies on the field of battle have bars that fill over time, and a fully filled bar allows them to take action. You've got basic commands to perform physical attacks, cast magical spells, use items, and anything else your characters are capable of. Squall has a unique ability to perform stronger strikes if you press one of the triggers on the controller at the right time, which is a little strange. The Limit Break system from Final Fantasy VII makes a return, albeit in an altered form. Instead of bars that gradually fill up as damage is taken, characters have a random chance of activating their Limit Breaks when low on health. Every character learns new Limit Break moves in different ways, like some of them learn new moves by finding magazines hidden in the environment. Also, there's usually button prompts that make Limit Breaks do more damage if executed correctly. Final Fantasy VIII's battles don't rely on Limit Breaks as much as the previous game, but they're still a part of the combat. What really gets me about the combat in this game is that leveling up serves no purpose. Enemies level up as you do, but they gain stats at a much higher rate than you do, so they'll always be more powerful. That means it benefits the enemies more than it benefits you to level up, making the act of leveling up totally useless. In other words, you'll do the opposite of what you're normally supposed to do in RPGs by avoiding battles like the plague. Punishing players for leveling up hardly seems like a good idea to me.

One of the most important gameplay elements of the game is the Guardian Forces, or as the game likes to abbreviate them, GFs. These are mythical beasts with immeasurable magical power that may be called during battle to cause great trouble for your foes. Previous Final Fantasy games had the same beasts, but they went by different names and worked differently. In Final Fantasy VIII, GFs are equipped to character of your choosing, and a single character is capable of having multiple GFs. Any equipped GFs can then be summoned in battle to execute powerful magical attacks. Because all your characters are really weak physically and magically, your main form of damage will come from GFs for a good chunk of the game. GFs will get stronger the more you use them in battle, as they level up just like your characters do, and they will usually learn new abilities. These abilities aren't used by the GFs; rather, they're used by your characters. Abilities do things like increase a character's strength, defense, maximum health, and even give them new commands in battle. The extra commands consist of stuff like the ability to steal from enemies. There are big problems with this system, though. The biggest one is that you must watch ridiculously long attack animations every time you use a GF in battle, and you're going to be using these things a lot. Normal enemies will fall quickly to GFs, but bosses take a lot of punishment, so be prepared to watch the same animations play out a million times in a row. As far as I know, there is no option to skip these animations. No matter how you look at it, this is poor design.

Magic works strangely in Final Fantasy VIII. There are no Magicites or Materia in this game, and characters don't learn spells, either. Instead, magic works much in the same way as items do. That is, you have a limited quantity of a particular spell, and it depletes as you use it. So if you have three Fire spells equipped, you can use Fire three times. In order to get more magic, you'll have to find "Draw Points" and draw some spells from them. Draw Points replenish over time, and there are many of them scattered throughout the game. It's also possible to "draw" spells from enemies in battle. Because magic is expendable, you'll have to constantly seek out Draw Points or draw spells from enemies to keep your magic fully stocked. On the one hand, this is a risky and interesting system, but on the other hand, it sucks. It's just not a very practical system in the long run, as it's so hard to maintain all of your spells. If the proper Draw Points aren't around and you run out of magic, then you're out of luck. Drawing magic from enemies is a cool concept, but a lot of the spells enemies carry are useless. That's another thing about magic in this game; it's not very useful. It doesn't do a whole lot of damage, especially when compared to the damage your GFs dish out. This is one of those ideas that sounds great on the paper, but doesn't work well when executed. It's just not fun.

Junctioning is the main form of character customization in Final Fantasy VIII. This is probably the weirdest mechanic out of any Final Fantasy game out there, so please bear with me as I explain it. The Junction system involves equipping certain GFs that enable you to equip magic to a character's stats. For example, some GFs will allow magic to be junctioned to your strength stat, allowing you to increase your strength. Characters don't get much stronger from leveling up, and there's no equipment, so junctioning is the main way of strengthening your characters. Spells can be equipped to any stat, provided you have an appropriate GF that allows it. Different spells will increase stats at different rates, like weak spells will provide small increases, while powerful spells provide bigger stat increases. The spells also stack, so assigning ten Fire spells to your strength will increase it more than five Fire spells. I have honestly never seen a system more confusing than this. It doesn't make any sense at all. There are a bunch of flaws to it, too. The major flaw is that this system totally eliminates any incentive you may have had to cast magic inside of battle, because casting magic reduces your quantity of it, and if the magic is junctioned to a particular stat, it will make that stat weaker. For instance, if you have ten Fire spells junctioned to your strength and you decide to cast Fire in battle, it'll go down to nine and your strength goes down with it, resulting in your characters getting weaker. So the moral of the story is to never, under any circumstances, use magic in battle. This is just faulty design. It's also unnecessarily convoluted and not at all intuitive.

Final Fantasy VIII introduces a horrific new side quest to waste endless hours of your time. I'm talking about the "Triple Triad" card game. This is the biggest side quest in RPG history, as it starts at nearly the beginning of the game and continues on until the very end. Considering Final Fantasy VIII is a fifty or sixty hour game, that's a big side quest. Your first set of cards is given to you by a random passerby who, for some reason, is willing to explain the rules. It's possible to challenge almost any NPC in the game to a game of cards. Whoever wins will get a free card from the loser. There's an ability that allows you to transform monsters into cards during battle, but the rarest cards in the game are acquired by beating people in card matches. As for how the card matches work, that's the tricky part. Each card will have four numbers, one number per side, ranging from one to A. The A stands for ten. You'll take turns with your opponent placing cards down onto the playing field in a grid like fashion. If the sides of two cards touch, then the side with the bigger number will "take" the opposing card. Whoever takes the most cards wins. There is a lot more to it than that, like cards having elemental affinities, but that's the gist of it. Things get extremely complicated once you encounter rules of different regions. I'm not going to bother explaining all of them, partly because I don't understand most of them, but playing the card game in different regions of the game's world will often change the rules radically. The card game is already complex enough as it is, so constantly changing the rules on you like this only adds to the confusion. I'd say it's not worth bothering with this one, as it's too involving and not worth it.

Final Fantasy VIII improves on the graphics of Final Fantasy VII, but that's about all it improves. The story is filled with tons of plot holes and is too convoluted for its own good, and the gameplay mechanics are a mess of impractical, contradictory ideas. Final Fantasy VIII does have a few positives, though. The music, while not as good as previous games, is still incredibly good, and the game's world is an interesting one. Sadly, it's all soured by the gameplay and story. Final Fantasy VIII isn't the worst RPG ever, but it's a colossal disappointment when compared to Final Fantasy VII.

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