This game has quite a few good things and bad things.
The ost is amazing, one of the best in the saga.
The graphics are considerably improved over the previous game and it has the best secondary card minigame.

BUT

The junction system is very bad and completely broken.
The characters are very flat and empty and the story is bad. It had potential but they play with timelines and there are many plot holes.
From the end of disc 1 the game stops making sense.

FFVIII foi um jogo marcante na minha vida mesmo antes de tê-lo, finalmente, zerado hoje. A primeira CG que eu assisti, ainda criança, foi a dança entre Rinoa e Squall, que me deixou muito intrigado não só pelas animações, expressões faciais e um gráfico que "parece até filme", mas também porque... eu me apaixonei pela Rinoa, de alguma forma? Queria saber mais dela, saber o que ia ser do casal, e ROMANCE nunca tinha se mostrado ou sido percebido como uma possibilidade em videogames! Só é uma pena que eu não tenha tido habilidade pra entender o mínimo do sistema de combate dele. E eu ainda não entendo. Se não fosse por isso, vai saber quem eu seria hoje se naquela idade, em que se absorve tudo como uma esponja, eu tivesse chegado até o final megalomaníaco, bizarro e "coração quentinho" dessa história de amor.

I don't even really know how to begin this one. The story was interesting during the first half until it threw it all away by disc 3. The Junction system was pretty strange at first but it's not really difficult thing to figure out. Drawing/Stocking magic sucks ass. The villain just... exists. The final fight was pretty cool though, but it also goes into how the combat feels more fun by the end when you've stocked all the magic you need. Overall though I did enjoy this game, but it's for sure something I wouldn't play again for a while.

Mi final fantasy favorito y sin duda una joya que la gente no sabe apreciar.
Sus mecanicas innovadoras donde la ventaja real reside en el control y mejora de magias sin depender del leveleo cotidiano en los rpgs da un aire fresco y mucho mas para darle al coco.
Su historia tiene sus cosas, pero junto a un análisis de literalmente dejar a chavales de 15 años ser soldados por la cantidad de muertos en guerras que ni ellos saben porqué están luchando, estar matando a seres que una vez fueron personas, y un desarrollo increible al protagonista, el cual al principio puede resultar odioso por lo introvertido y "edgy" que es, pero no solo gracias a Rinoa si no a la busqueda de si mismo que puede mejorar por quien es.
Obviamente tiene estupideces como lo de la explicación de como se conocieron y la estupida amnesia de no reconocerse los unos a los otros, pero quitando los agujeros de guion que se pueden contar con los dedos de una mano, este juego es sin duda una obra incomprendida que defenderé a capa y espada.
Sinceramente, jugadlo sin prejuicios de haberlo visto en un putisimo video de mierda solo despotricando el juego en vez de entenderlo como muchas otras sagas que te obligan a entender y jugar de la manera que el juego quiere que juegues.
Mi final fantasy favorito, o si no uno de mis favoritos.

"Mujeres... no las entiendo."
-Squall Leonhart

My favorite memory related to this game is when I was playing it for the first time, my brother would occasionally stop by to watch when he had nothing better to do. There was this one time when I was playing one of the Laguna sections, a battle started and The Man With the Machine Gun played, after a few seconds my brother said "Wow, this battle theme is so much better than that lame-ass one that played all the time before." referring to Don't Be Afraid in the Squall part.

While I don't agree that Don't Be Afraid sucks, I absolutely cannot argue against Man With the Machine Gun being vastly superior, that's like a 6/10 track compared to a 9/10 track.

Uno de los FF mas polemicos de todos los tiempos, pero siendo realistas, Square ya habia podido seguir surfeando la ola de éxito de FF6 con FF7 y volver a hacer otro MEGA hit que detone la industría por tercera vez, sería algo dificil.
Personalmente es mi FF favorito, el sistema de combate (Junction) es algo dificil de entender y tiene partes que, una vez tenes totalmente dominado el sistema, se le pueden ver claras fallas.

Lo que núnca voy a convalidar, son los comentarios que se leen por internet, diciendo que el juego es "malo" porque se pueden hacer estrategías para romper la dificultad desde el CD1. Esto es algo que leí hasta el cansancio online y me es increíble como todos pueden repetir semejante boludes.
Por supuesto que hay estrategias que banalizan la dificultad (lo mismo podemos hacer en FF4,FF5,FF6 y FF7) pero un jugador nuevo el 99.9% de las veces le va a ser imposible descubrir estos elementos por su propia cuenta, se requiere muchisimo conocimiento de los sistemas de juego para hacer esas estrategias, son cosas que uno saca en un segundo playthrough máximo.
Ahora, si se ponen a jugar un videojuego con una guia en el otro monitor (lo cual respeto completamente), leyendo exactamente que es lo que tienen que hacer, que items usar, que habilidades subir y cuanto tiempo subir de nivel, no se me pongan a criticar la dificultad después....

En otra nota mas positiva: mucha gente esta de acuerdo que este juego tiene uno de los mejores Soundtracks de la franquicia, y eso en FF, que esta acostumbrado a tener los mejores compositores de la industria, dice muchiiiiisimo.

The oddball entry in the PS1-era Final Fantasies, VIII tends to have a polarising reception. I'm afraid I fall into the less happy category; to me VIII is an absolute mess of a game.

We follow Squall, a student at Balamb Garden, a school for training child mercenaries. He, along with some fellow students, are sent off on a mission to aid some rebels but it doesn't take long before the world erupts into war and Squall is caught in the centre of it. Because it's about child soldiers, there's a powerful, evocative system of abuse baked into the core of VIII's story, which makes it all the worse that the game barely ever remembers that and instead focuses on its absolutely moronic cast of characters. Every member of your party is insufferable, from Squall's constant self-loathing whines to Zell's pure unfiltered idiocy, and watching them bumble through the game's events is a source of genuine frustration.

Making things worse is one of the most obtuse set of mechanics ever tried in a JRPG. I'm all for experimentation, but when you push the boundaries sometimes you hit a stumbling block and VIII is that. You have a bewildering amount of menus to manage to get by in VIII; you've got your Guardian Forces which are summons you equip to characters to augment their stats, but they're also capable of learning skills which need to be assigned to your characters as well. You need to grind enemies to find the loot they drop since that's the only way of improving your weapons, but equally level grinding is discouraged because of the level scaling so you're caught between a rock and a hard place in that regard. Oh, and don't forget having to waste countless hours of your life drawing spell charges from enemies so you can cast spells - but don't actually cast them because doing that weakens your stats! VIII is an utter cacophany of bad decisions and attempts to reinvent the wheel.

What a weird and charming game this is.

I both understand how it could be someone's favorite final fantasy and another's worst.

It's really all over the place, but odly enough it worked for me. I appreciate the imagination, style and just vibe of the whole thing.

The soundtrack is instantly nostalgic, the visuals were surely a treat back on the old ps1 and the cast of characters endearing.

A memorable entry in the franchise for sure.

This is a good game. It would be extremely easy to levy its many shortcomings against it in bullet-point fashion to make the case that it is not impressive or even bad; however, in the future i see myself looking back on this game quite fondly. This game fits right into that late 90s early 00s era of video games where creativity was at its peak and developers had to push the limited technology into their insane ideas. Not only that but the junction system--grindy as it can be--makes this by far the most enjoyable mainline final fantasy gameplay wise within the first 10 entries, potentially ever. Optimizing and toying around with that made playing for hours on end very easy, and it is no wonder this is the only final fantasy where I ended up level capping and actually killing the Biggest Baddest Dude There Is (Omega Weapon). On top of all that, when the story is good it hits really hard. Squall and Rinoa have such an endearing arc that doesn't interrupt the overall plot in any way whatsoever. The ending cutscene post final boss was downright amazing; I haven't been that impressed with visual mindfuckery since I'd seen Perfect Blue.

Playing FF8 really made me feel a bit sad that it was 7 that got the remake. Not trying to hate on FF7R but in my opinion, OG 7 was pretty close to perfect the way it was made back for the PS1, and the remake didn't really improve upon it in any way that it really needed for it to function (although it did kind of create a new identity for itself). I mentioned that 8 has its shortcomings--and believe me there are a handful and they are quite serious--but I think if some of it were addressed properly then Final Fantasy 8 could have really been spectacular and immortalized as a must-play classic JRPG.

ff8 is a game that is very hard for me to compile my thoughts on, but i thought i might as well try now that it's been a bit since i've finished it

i can get 8 not being somebody's favorite final fantasy, but this is such a beautiful piece of art to me that it feels like most of the game's bad reputation is just a mass gaslighting campaign perpetuated by early 2000s gaming magazines and kept alive by people who are scared of earnest emotionality in their video games. not everything that happens in this game is necessarily logical and it does have its flaws—the main antagonist is good but far from the series strongest and the disc 2 twist, while not nearly as bad as anyone has ever made it out to be, is delivered a little bit clumsily—but i feel like that's in service of being such an emotionally resonant game that it can barely be seen as a downside. the story of squall and rinoa is so beautiful to me in a way that so few love stories between a man and a woman can be for me and there were multiple points where i started to tear up a bit just because of how much i loved my experience with 8's story and characters.
when it comes to ff8's gameplay the junction system is unironically one of the few times that the atb battle system has been even remotely enjoyable, and while it isn't as strong mechanically as materias from 7 and the tutorials conveying the system in game aren't the best, i think it's a bit sad how having to engage with the mechanics differently is enough to put people off to the game's combat. with just a little bit more time in the oven and an audience more willing to engage with change, the junction system would probably be one of the most celebrated battle systems in any square enix jrpg with dickriders at the level of smirk and press turn from smt, and maybe in general final fantasy 8 would be more celebrated for the amazing game that it deserves to be seen as.

also gunblades are raw as shit and are by far the coolest weapon that any square enix game has ever had don't @ me

I can barely form a coherent thought about what I just finished but I feel weirdly seen by Final Fantasy VIII and its protagonist in particular as this understanding of specific feelings of capitalist alienation that I've been unable to articulate for the longest time. I don't have any official diagnosis and especially do not want people I barely know armchair diagnosing me online but Squall's struggles to process the most basic social interactions in terms of anything other than capitalist obligations like school or work, "shut up and get the job done" mentality, and specific jaded outlook are core parts of myself I never expected to see reflected in this fashion. While I narrowly prefer the basic bitch choices of VI and VII in terms of Final Fantasy games, this surreal response to the cultural zeitgeist of the latter game and weird as fuck (complimentary) use of Marxist theory (specifically the "annihilation of space by time" described in Grundrisse and expanded upon over a century later by David Harvey) in the same way that most RPGs use religious/mythological concepts solely because it sounds cool is a game that will no doubt have a special place in my heart from now on.