This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy VIII just goes to show that Kitase can handle mood, but the writing and decisionmaking for his games wants to appeal to a broad audience with quirky plot points but nothing more.
He allowed killing Chrono in Chrono Trigger... Only to allow the player to bring him back via a sidequest. Here, he brings up a story about transitioning from childhood into adulthood with some pretty interesting and experimental ways of telling the story, but he again falls into plot points that take away all the credibility and impact the tale could have had as it goes on.
I really like the juxtaposition between Squall and Laguna. Both father and son are conflicted with love, Squall not seeking to get connected to people because of being heartbroken as a kid, and as such desperately attempting to become the member of an organization of mercenaries, in an attempt to falsely grow up. As the story goes on, Squall realizes he doesn't have the nerve to be a commander and has to force himself into losing his own independence to handle the responability of protecting the people he cares about, but it's emotionally a painful journey for him as he needs to understand being mature isn't distancing himself emotionally, but inspiring others with proper judgement.
Laguna, instead, behaves like a kid through most of his youth, but actually wants to become engaged with someone and that's how he tries to help the lady from Winhill with her inn and her daughter. Despite his spirit, the relationship came to an end because of an indirect responsability in her death, and was only able to become a rebel leader and eventual president of a successful city after going through the loss.
What would be a similar event in Squall's story of love is the part where he must go search Rinoa and save her in space, after he desperately admitted to himself that he needed her. It's my favourite scene of the game because the expectations coming from FF7 killing Aeris and the clues that Laguna's search for love mirrored what Squall was going through made what was going to happen very unpredictable, specially with how well directed that scene is, it feels like something out of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. I am actually not annoyed that, like in Chrono Trigger, Kitase doesn't have the balls to actually kill a main characther, because it does an uplifting reversal of Laguna's tale and shows that Squall learnt the faults of his personality with a lot of effort, it feels deserved.
However, the game starts to fall apart when tackling the themes about growing up and leaving the childhood behind. It's very interesting that Ellone has a power to see events long ago in a game about that thematic, but the game at one point near the end of disc 2 decides to start adding up conveniences and asspulls to add drama.
While never before foreshadowed, all the main characthers except Rinoa come from the same childhood orphanage and they don't remember this because the summons they use to battle fucked up their memories. It's an interesting way of saying that work banishes your traces of innocence, but the way the puzzle pieces line up for this becomes ridiculous.
The game continues throwing random stuff to advance the plot and starts the second half by revealing the villain up to that point, closely related to the protagonists in a way Squall and the player start questioning the ethics of the in-game job as a mercenary, is just being controlled from the future. Final Fantasy 4 also became melodramatic by having the antagonist be controlled people, but that game was made almost a decade earlier, and story points should have been refined. This kind of asspull eliminates the agency from the characther and makes her actions have no value.
The game then, starts feeling underwhelming to me. Despite a very interesting start as the most personal Final Fantasy story to date, the game devolves into the tropes typical to the franchise in an attempt to make the game an epic in its second half. This just amounts to what feels like random stuff happening until the extremely surreal ending, which very much wants to say something about reflecting on our childhood and our adulthood (the monster the final boss summons has the same name as the ring Squall gave to Rinoa, for example), but again, the weird time travel shenaningans as in Kitase's Chrono Trigger end up becoming the centre of attention to make for a pretentious spectacle, which ends up being a half-baked introspective journey, and a half-baked epic, without fullfilling the potential of neither objective.
It feels like the team behind the game became anxious and ended up following the conventions of previous FF works to make the story. But they should have followed the teachings of the Shumi Village, a side quest which is the best bit of narrative in the story: to follow in the steps of an idol may be tempting, but one must clear himself of his urges to do so.
Ps: Thanks Josep for recommending the game. Even though I didn't find it to be exceptional, it had some very beautiful moments! :D
He allowed killing Chrono in Chrono Trigger... Only to allow the player to bring him back via a sidequest. Here, he brings up a story about transitioning from childhood into adulthood with some pretty interesting and experimental ways of telling the story, but he again falls into plot points that take away all the credibility and impact the tale could have had as it goes on.
I really like the juxtaposition between Squall and Laguna. Both father and son are conflicted with love, Squall not seeking to get connected to people because of being heartbroken as a kid, and as such desperately attempting to become the member of an organization of mercenaries, in an attempt to falsely grow up. As the story goes on, Squall realizes he doesn't have the nerve to be a commander and has to force himself into losing his own independence to handle the responability of protecting the people he cares about, but it's emotionally a painful journey for him as he needs to understand being mature isn't distancing himself emotionally, but inspiring others with proper judgement.
Laguna, instead, behaves like a kid through most of his youth, but actually wants to become engaged with someone and that's how he tries to help the lady from Winhill with her inn and her daughter. Despite his spirit, the relationship came to an end because of an indirect responsability in her death, and was only able to become a rebel leader and eventual president of a successful city after going through the loss.
What would be a similar event in Squall's story of love is the part where he must go search Rinoa and save her in space, after he desperately admitted to himself that he needed her. It's my favourite scene of the game because the expectations coming from FF7 killing Aeris and the clues that Laguna's search for love mirrored what Squall was going through made what was going to happen very unpredictable, specially with how well directed that scene is, it feels like something out of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. I am actually not annoyed that, like in Chrono Trigger, Kitase doesn't have the balls to actually kill a main characther, because it does an uplifting reversal of Laguna's tale and shows that Squall learnt the faults of his personality with a lot of effort, it feels deserved.
However, the game starts to fall apart when tackling the themes about growing up and leaving the childhood behind. It's very interesting that Ellone has a power to see events long ago in a game about that thematic, but the game at one point near the end of disc 2 decides to start adding up conveniences and asspulls to add drama.
While never before foreshadowed, all the main characthers except Rinoa come from the same childhood orphanage and they don't remember this because the summons they use to battle fucked up their memories. It's an interesting way of saying that work banishes your traces of innocence, but the way the puzzle pieces line up for this becomes ridiculous.
The game continues throwing random stuff to advance the plot and starts the second half by revealing the villain up to that point, closely related to the protagonists in a way Squall and the player start questioning the ethics of the in-game job as a mercenary, is just being controlled from the future. Final Fantasy 4 also became melodramatic by having the antagonist be controlled people, but that game was made almost a decade earlier, and story points should have been refined. This kind of asspull eliminates the agency from the characther and makes her actions have no value.
The game then, starts feeling underwhelming to me. Despite a very interesting start as the most personal Final Fantasy story to date, the game devolves into the tropes typical to the franchise in an attempt to make the game an epic in its second half. This just amounts to what feels like random stuff happening until the extremely surreal ending, which very much wants to say something about reflecting on our childhood and our adulthood (the monster the final boss summons has the same name as the ring Squall gave to Rinoa, for example), but again, the weird time travel shenaningans as in Kitase's Chrono Trigger end up becoming the centre of attention to make for a pretentious spectacle, which ends up being a half-baked introspective journey, and a half-baked epic, without fullfilling the potential of neither objective.
It feels like the team behind the game became anxious and ended up following the conventions of previous FF works to make the story. But they should have followed the teachings of the Shumi Village, a side quest which is the best bit of narrative in the story: to follow in the steps of an idol may be tempting, but one must clear himself of his urges to do so.
Ps: Thanks Josep for recommending the game. Even though I didn't find it to be exceptional, it had some very beautiful moments! :D