Ffviii Game Reviews

[Knuckles]

This thread is for members of SEF to leave a review on this FF game. Reviews must be a minimum of two paragraphs, contain likes and dislikes, and overall assessment, and a score out of 10. A link to your review and score will then be added to this first post, and all the scores will then be averaged to get the overall scoring.

Please do not post anything other than a review in this thread. For discussion, or more information, please check out the Final Fantasy Game Reviews - Discussion Topic.

---------- ---------- ----------

Reviewers:
Amaru - 8 / 10


Averaged Score:
8

[Knuckles]

'An Unconventional Mix'
Written by Amaru

After having experienced such a monumental game such as Final Fantasy VII, I, and I believe many others, were more than eager to lap up the next installment in a series that I had only recently heard about and played. I had no access to the Internet back then, but the thin trickle of ingame pictures and snippits of information about the game, gained from various resources such as video-game magazines, increased my anticipation of the next Final Fantasy - a game that would not only match the previous version, but maybe even ascend beyond it.

Sadly, I didn't believe that this was the case, and the first time that I played through FFVIII, I disliked it ... immensely. On it's own, I felt that the story, characters, battle system and concepts were just out of synch and not that impressive, and in comparison with FFVII, it faired even worse. It took another two to three complete play-throughs, before my enjoyment of FFVIII rose, and I began to find a newfound appreciation for some of the elements and story.

Reaching a step beyond the excellent cyber-punk / spiritual mesh that FFVII had perfectly presented, FFVIII seemed like it was set in a futuristic science-fiction landscape. Though there have been many complaints about this heavy sci-fi overtone of the next installment, not all of it is true. Yes, the tone was quite heavy, and could be felt throughout the entire game, but magic was still at the forefront of everything - the various Sorceresses and Guardian Forces, which was what the game was really about. But it was hard to see the magic that was there when you have such sci-fi tones, settings, and ideas in a game, including concepts of time travel, time compression, Esther, trips to outerspace in a futuristic alien ship, a space station, and the like.

As I mentioned earlier, on my first play through, I did not like the game much at all. Ignoring the effects of the sci-fi setting, I had a hard time with a lot of the elements in the game, like some characters, the battle system, and the storyline. Ah yes ... the battle system. FFVIII has been said to have one of the worse battle systems of the series. Whether people individually agree with this or not, the system, at first, was a complete pain. Junctioning seemed like an over-complex and indecypherable precedure, mind-numbingly drawing magic only made to extend every random battle and add to a sense of boredom, no longer were there lots of different weapons but upgrades, and monsters leveled up as you did.

All in all, enjoyments in actual battles was low, which, in turn, made discovering the storyline hard.

Every story needs a main hero, not just someone great and strong, but someone who you can connect with. I felt this with Cloud (the weak guy who just wanted to be someone - a hero - but didn't realise that he was one all along) and Squall (unable to properly express his feelings). Essences of both characters could be felt by people today, which is what made them so good. Though, I must admit, Squall tend to overdramatize sometimes, and his attitude did grate at times. But then, some of the other character felt quite wortheless, both in the overall scheme of the storyline, and for just being there, which was a shame. The story itself with Sorceresses, the Rinoa incident and such, were intriguining, but after completing the entire game, it just seemed to lack a certain something overall.

FFVIII did excel in other areas though. It's graphics were superb, holding a highly realistic feel, it's music was top-notch, and it's CGI (including the opening) were amazing viewing. Going back to my earlier statement, though I did not overall enjoy the game my first time round, on my consequetive play-throughs, I began to find a deeper appreciation for the game and some of the concepts used. As I write this, I've realised that I've talked more in this review than in FFVIIs, the reason being, that there was a lot of mixed feelings about this game. Yet, though I thought that the game had many flaws for it's few strengths, there was just something about it that makes it remain a favourite from the Final Fantasy series.

Score: 8 / 10

__________________
SeeD: New Elite [FFVIII stats RP]
KH: Crusaders of the Light [Kingdom Hearts stats RP]
Cherubim [War RP] || Eve 1XF [RP Profile]
Christine [RP Profile]

- FFS Super Moderator: Any questions, feel free to ask -

[Kynes]

First Bravo n the Nice review. Personaly i loved the battle system in ff8 it was smt new and fresh somrthing unique not just in the ff series but in all rpg games. U say some of the characters weren't nessesery i dissagree cause cause i see them all as a whole u know and ff9 for me wouldn't be ff8 if Selphie or Zell or any1 wasnt there. The story for me was mindblowing dunno
what ur fuss is about it being too much sci-fi. The main vilain was a sorrseror what else do u want... i would grade it 9/10 just because ff7 has a little better storyline and cooler main character

__________________
I am Immortal

RP char:
Armand Natas
Atlas Evangelion