Hmmmm not as good (Final Fantasy VIII (PS))

Member Name: Closs

Product:	Final Fantasy VIII (PS)
Date:	07/10/03 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Music

Disadvantages: Characters

Final Fantasy returns for an 8th instalment but has the magic worn off?

...In a word, yes, yes it has worn off. FFVIII is the downfall that was just waiting to happen in this long running series. I'll start with the gameplay...

The game is fun from the immediate start, running round killing some monsters, talking to some students at the School you attend and so forth, everything is pretty much fine and dandy until the story attempts to pick-up and you realise what a shallow plot and collection of characters you have. The story sounds good on paper but it's drawn-out (pun intended) and boring, a pretty bog-standard love story that really should never have been conceived.
Basically, you're a Sorceress-killer in training at Balamb Garden along with a few other students (and the other party members) you eventually discover a Sorceress's plot to destroy the world and must stop her, along the way the hero (Squall, a highly annoying moron) falls in love with Rinoa (also highly annoying). This is the gist of the story, there are of course a few plot-twists (not very good ones) and a few side-quests to take part in.

The game is helped though, by it's fantastic graphics, no denying it, the game looks great even today. The backgrounds are pre-rendered just like FFVII so there is zero camera movement (bar panning the screen) but the they do look very nice and detailed all the same.
The characters could look good but they have terrible fashion sense...

The game also sounds nice, although not containing an epic soundtrack like VI or VII it does contain a few memorable tunes. The sound effects are the standard swishing of swords and Quistis's excellent whip cracking sound effect.
This is also the first FF game to feature a fully vocalised track called 'Eyes on Me' which is a rather nice addition.

FF games are known for changing most everything with every instalment and this is no different, th
is is not a good improvement on Materia, Espers or Jobs though, this is called Junctioning and it sucks righteously. Like everything else in the game it sounds good but doesn't work in practice. You Draw your magic from enemies and use Guardian Forces (summons) to attach them to one of you're characters stats like HP or Luck. The more of that magic you have the higher that stat is boosted, except this means that using that magic will weaken your character...thus starts the chain of stupidity. Using this well will make you damn-near invincible on the 1st disk and to add to this Levelling-Up is absolutely pointless as the enemies will come down to your level or level up depending on your characters.

As I said before, the characters are awful, the main character says barely anything except "Whatever" and "..." which gets highly irritating after awhile, also some characters (I'm looking at you Zell) have little point for being in the game. This takes us onto the final complaint, the characters back-story do not develop over time and are instead thrown at the player in one go...one very bad go at that.

In the games favour, some side quests are fairly amusing and not every character is terrible (just most). But the developers attempt to replace Moogle's with a horrible species called Moomba's is almost unforgivable...
Despite all this it still remains a playable RPG and features some fantastic set-pieces and battles, just don't expect anything fantastic in the story department

Summary: