Home Page / psx / F / Final Fantasy VIII / Review Listing / Review

Since the release of Final Fantasy for the 8-bit NES so many years ago, gamers have been treated to Squaresoft's impressive series of console RPG titles. Some, unfortunately, never saw the light of day in America, which was odd since the unreleased titles were considered by most who'd played them to be the best of the lot. (One of the unreleased titles, Final Fantasy V, should be available in the Final Fantasy Anthology for the Playstation by the time you read this.) Square remained faithful to the Nintendo consoles until the release of the Playstation, when they moved on to create the wonder that was Final Fantasy VII. This title did so well that it spawned a PC version, which was unfortunately plagued with compatibility problems.

All of the Final Fantasy games deal with a small band of unlikely heroes, and their part in averting a global catastrophe on their home planet. They don't link to each other, except in a couple of ways that are basically trademarks of the series. (Every FF game contains, somewhere, a character named Cid, and most have the bird-like Chocobos as transportation.) So you don't have to have played the previous games to enjoy Final Fantasy VIII.

But speaking of the previous games, they are all considered highlights of the console RPG field. Will Final Fantasy VIII be as well? I'd say yes, though I don't consider it to be quite as good as Final Fantasy V or Final Fantasy VII. Read on to find out why - but buy the game anyway!

Your avatar in the game is Squall, a SeeD (don't ask what it stands for, I don't know, and I beat the game) and altogether uncommunicative fellow. Along the adventure, you'll pick up several other characters, and occasionally do a Quantum Leap-like move into three more characters. Any of the characters can be molded into whatever sort of battler you'd like, through the use of the new and interesting Junction system.

Since the in-game and manual explanations of Junction are, shall we say, sub-par, I'll explain it here. Basically, as you go through the game, you collect Guardian Forces. When you equip, or "junction", a Guardian Force to a character, the character gains several abilities, depending on the Guardian Force. The primary ones are Draw, Magic, GF, and Item. Magic casts spells, and Item uses tools...fairly straightforward. GF summons one of your junctioned Guardian Forces - in a neat twist, while you're summoning the GF, it takes any damage received insted of that damage going to your character. If it takes too much damage, it dies and is unavailable until resurrected after the battle. Draw is an interesting one. It's the only way to get spells in Final Fantasy VIII. You use Draw on an enemy, and you see a list of that enemy's spells. You can then choose to either Stock the spell, which adds a few uses of that spell to your spellbook, or Cast it immediately. You can Stock up to 100 of each spell. Once you've Drawn some magic, you can equip (again, "junction") it to various stats to increase your characters' abilities however you'd like. Whew! Sounds tricky, but it's actually quite easy to get the hang of.

However, this lack of distinction between the characters sort of ties in to what I consider to be FF8's major flaw. The key to any RPG is story. You have to be interested in the characters, and in their development and their effect on the story. In FF8, partially due to the fact that Squall just doesn't let anyone know what's up with him, it's difficult to care about the characters. Most of the characters other than Squall get only a superficial treatment in the story, comparatively. This is unfortunate to say the least. Not that the story itself is bad, it actually gets quite interesting and involved, especially if you take the time to visit the side quests. One village exists solely for the purpose of fleshing out the back story! However, I just wasn't drawn into the story through the characters the way I was in, say, FF3 or FF7.

If you don't feel like advancing the plot, there's still ways to occupy your time. If you happen to be lucky enough to have an import Pocketstation (for some reason, they're not available in the US), you can play a minigame based on the Chocobos. I can't comment on this minigame, as I don't have a Pocketstation. It seems like this area should have been recoded in other ways for the American release due to the unavailability of the Pocketstation here. Or, you can waste innumerable hours, like I did, in the addiction that is Triple Triad.

Since this review is already getting somewhat lengthy, I'll be brief in explaining Triple Triad. You win cards by defeating monsters, or through winning Triple Triad games. Each card has a number corresponding to one of its four sides. When you play, you pick five of your cards, and the PSX picks five from its pool. You take turns placing cards down. If you put down two cards next to each other, one number will be adjacent. If you put down the second one, and the adjacent number is higher than that on the first one, you flip that card to your color. Whoever has the most cards of their color after the board is filled wins, and gets one of his opponents' cards. These cards can be used either to take on tougher Triple Triad opponents, or turned into items.

There's plenty of world to explore, plenty of story in each area, and plenty of variety in the spells and combats. If you try really hard to get into the characters, you'll not have any problem loving the gameplay of FF8.

The game took me 93 hours to complete. No joke. Most people will probably finish it in around 30 or 40, though. I spent a lot of time playing Triple Triad, drawing magic, maxing out my characters and Guardian Forces, and basically exploring the world. If you like to see everything in a game, you'll get more time out of FF8, because there's a lot to see!

First, a major point for Square for automatically activating the analog function on the Dual Shock pads when the game loads! Every game with analog support should do this!

Analog support is implemented perfectly. The right-hand analog stick is even useful at times - it doubles as a throttle control for vehicles! Battle menus are quick to navigate, and an option is provided to remember cursor position (though for some reason, it doesn't remember it between battles) so you can keep summoning that GF repeatedly. The controls are well-explained in the game whenever a new one is needed.

So why the relatively low score? The game seems to depend quite heavily on mashing the Square button as fast as possible, during the use of the Boost technique for Guardian Forces. Once learned, you hold Select while casting a summon, then hit Square as fast as you can to increase the damage done by the summon. My Dual Shock controller's Square button is now only partially functional, due to the heavy abuse it took during my FF8 sessions. Since use of Boost is almost essential for winning the tougher battles, it seems like the controls for it should have been made a bit less demanding. The summons are rather lengthy, too, which both makes battles drag on for a rather long time and makes you hit Square all the much more.

The graphics in FF8 are a great step up from FF7. The characters look like real people, instead of bunches of circles and triangles. They have many different animations, which are easily recognizable body language, that help enhance the storytelling. The combat backgrounds are different for every room in the game, and no monster is a mere palette swap of another. The summon magic animations are quite impressive, though they'll bore you after you've seen them a few dozen times and are forced to watch them yet again.

But the crown jewel of FF8 are the FMVs and the way they tie into the gameplay. The quality of the FMV is absolutely stunning. If you've played Xenogears, you know what Square can do with pre-rendered animation on the PSX. FF8 is a step above even Xenogears. It's difficult to adequately describe just how well done they are...you really have to see them for yourself. They've never been topped on the Playstation, and likely never will be.

Which makes it even more amazing how well the game transitions between animations and gameplay. There are several sequences in the game where your characters are actually moving WITHIN a playing FMV! The game can switch to FMV mode from normal gameplay mode, and most of the time you can't even tell that it's done it. FF8 is a visual masterpiece on the Playstation, and it can only get better on the PC when the inevitable port is released.

Composer Nobuo Uematsu provides another wonderful Final Fantasy score. The music is never distracting and almost never annoying (OK, maybe the battle music gets a little old), and fits the area where you are very well. Voice samples enhance the soundtrack at points, and there's even a full blown single as one of the musical tracks! Too bad it's a sappy love song ;) The volume of the background music adjusts itself depending on your distance from the source of the music, when appropriate. To sum up, let's put it this way - the FF8 soundtrack album is selling quite well on its own. As a trivia tidbit, "Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec" doesn't mean anything...it just SOUNDS Latin. It's actually an anagram.

Sound effects are well done and varied for the various monsters and events in the game. Sound is used quite well in the Chocobo sub-quests. You'll never find yourself wondering where they came up with a sound, they always seem to fit.

I waffled between a score of 8/10 and 9/10 on this for a long time, but settled on 9. FF8 is a step up from FF7 in many ways, but the character development is a step down. There's a great story, you'll just have more trouble getting into it than in other FF games. Nonetheless, this is still a top-notch title, and should be in any console RPG fan's library. If you didn't buy a Playstation for FF7, buy one for FF8.