A great game that is reduced to a being a "good" game by a few bad decisions. The draw system is interesting and certainly has positive points, but often results in players unnecessarily grinding for magic or refusing to cast any of it, just because of the psychology that's now in play. Making several GFs only obtainable by drawing from unmarked bosses throughout the game is either cool or cruel depending on who you ask. Level scaling every enemy in an RPG is just... pretty much always a bad idea. The game's whole difficulty curve can be annihilated early on just by buying a few select items on the cheap, and while it's easy to say "well don't do that then," it still speaks to ill-considered balance. Many players including myself find themselves confused about what is and is not supposed to make their party more powerful, and that sort of confusion just doesn't speak well of the game design. Several story beats are conveyed in ways that make them feel too absurd to be taken seriously, even if upon close inspection their internal logic is relatively sound. Flaws aside, FF8 is just fucking cool, and it's worth experiencing. It's far from the best FF, but it certainly isn't the worst.

The first time I ever played this, I borrowed it from a friend and it got lost in a backlog of other games that just caught my attention at the time. I didn't really like Squall and his generally complain-y attitude, but I soldiered through to Disc 3 (I think?) before the Backlog Monster ate it.

When I finally got around to playing it again several months later, I found myself completely lost on what to do and ended up driving my mountain/school bus around the world for about an hour before eventually just giving up and moving on to other stuff. I didn't feel particularly invested in the story up to that point, so no real loss for me.

Eventually, I decided to go back and do a run-through of every FF game in the main series and came back to knock this one out. My opinion of things didn't really change, though I made sure to actually focus on the game wholly this time so I didn't lose track of where I could/should be going.

The story didn't really do anything for me and coming off the Materia system (which I really enjoyed), the Draw system just felt like some monstrous mixture of "not interesting" and "easily exploitable". The visuals were fine for their time, but given that it was almost 18 years later or so, there wasn't anything really hooking me that other RPGs didn't do better before or after this.

To each their own, right? Maybe it deserves a 1.0, but it's (at least for now) tied for my least favorite FF game alongside FF XIII.

My first Final Fantasy and I just love it! Of course lots of nostalgia in it.
However I replayed it last year, and it was just as good. Once you know how the junction system works, and you should avoid leveling up too much, you get a fair playthrough. But that may also ruin your gameplay if you are unaware of. It's a bit exploitable, drawing magic infinitely from the enemies to boost your stats. In my opinion they should limit it at least.
The card game is amazing, I spent hours and hours just collecting all the cards. That's best mini game in the entire series.
There's a lot of criticism related to the story, that gives to much emphasis on the romance between Squall and Rinoa, but it was something new by that time, and totally fair experiment from the Squaresoft.
It has one of the most challenging final boss. The design of the last dungeon is great.

haters may hate but this is the best Uematsu soundtrack that exists and Tetsuya Nomura channeling art nouveau/euro sci-fi makes for one of the most peculiar and special worlds in the series. Genuinely think the bildungsromance-y mutual character growth between Squall and Rinoa is sweet, wry, and generally excellent, although its a bummer the rest of the (endearing! good!) cast largely loses relevance to the central conflict and hardly chimes in or develops much after Trabia Garden or so. The plot as a whole ends up in some bonkers places (which I actually enjoy despite the inanity; there's a touching sort of emotional honesty to the gestural teen melodrama chrono-existential pathos of it alll) but Edea is definitely the most imposing and seductive villain in the whole franchise--for the first disc at least. The FMVs in this game still floor me, and the borderline postmodern combat/leveling systems are fascinating in concept and super easy to exploit and render meaningless if you hate them and just want to get through the story. Not my favorite, but theres a ton to love here if you just chill out and approach the game on its own terms.

also laguna is a total hottie and can get it

De todos los FF de la numeración principal que he jugado, es el que menos me ha gustado. Sus personajes están estereotipados y con conversaciones nivel "japonesada extrema" son, en definitiva, inverosímiles y con actitudes y pensamientos irreales. La construcción de su historia abusa de los deus ex machina. Los protagonistas, su personalidad y sus relaciones entre ellos parecen escritas por un hikikomori japonés intentando construir personajes creíbles pero lastrado desde su carencia de habilidades sociales y trastornos asociados. Para rematar, su argumento está lleno de sorpresas para mal porque abusan de los giros de guión y las explicaciones, como ya he dicho, de "lo hizo un mago".

De su sistema de combate y jugabilidad lo mejor que se puede decir de él es que invita a no jugarlo y cuando consigues la habilidad de "ningún encuentro" es gloria bendita.

Su música es discreta pero suele acompañar bien. Hay algún tema digno de recordar, pero desde mi humilde punto de vista es una de las peores OST de todos los RPGs de square.

Su juego de cartas engancha, da gusto pasar horas y horas echando triple triads, sobretodo en las primeras horas del juego si no sacas las cartas tier1. Su sistema de magias y enlaces permite disfrutar de un segundo run rompiendo el juego. Aunque el primer run a ciegas es relativamente sufrido.

A nivel jugable, hay varios momentos (la misión del tren, la manera de obtener el GF Brothers, el desafío final...) y mecánicas en los que se nota que intentaron innovar la (ya en su época) manida fórmula de los RPGs y el resultado es positivo. Aunque, por ejemplo, el sistema de magias y GFs es muy interesante e invita a explorarlo, el sistema de extracción de magias en combate provocará aburrimiento en aquellos que no conozcan el min/maxing del título. Su sistema de enemigos con nivel adaptado es un claro intento de evitar que el abuso de farmeo convierta el título en un paseo pero... consigue todo lo contrario: que el paseo se consiga al evitar el farmeo y abusar de los enlaces.

A pesar de todos sus defectos y de su mediocridad, le he echado unas cuantas horas. Es una obra que sólo recomendaría a los fans de la saga (que ya lo habrán jugado, probablemente). Para aquellos que no lo sean, mi consejo es que hay unos cuantos JRPGs más recomendables en esta misma plataforma (chrono trigger, FFIV, FFVII, FFIX...) y ya si nos salimos de steam hay mejores títulos en su género a patadas.

Revisiting it 15 years or so later, this game is just all over the place. For every up there is a down, and sometimes we are talking about entire aspects or systems of the game. The biggest down is the plot, which is mostly terrible. But also on the writing side you have this theme of love that is as youthfully cheesy as it is somehow effective. For every contrived plot point, dense as hell protagonist moment, and completely broken game mechanic, you have an enjoyable part of said broken mechanics, a dense as hell protagonist moment that is too hilarious to not be enjoyable, an ambitiously directed battle sequence, a really out-there place you never expected the game to take you, and - let's be real - "Eyes on Me".

In the end, for all its flaws, I still have to give it an enthusiastic recommendation.