I used to have mixed feelings on this one, but I've really turned around on it after replaying it some time ago. It has a lot of messy ideas, but I kinda love that about it, and I think they mostly succeed, if you are willing to experiment more and figure out how things work. In the context of the greater franchise, it is still very its own worthwhile experience, even if sometimes it feels like it's overlooked by the games in the series that released both before and after it. Plus, it's one of the only games in the series where I can confidently say I really like all the party members!

I'm impressed by how daring FF8 is as a game, it's too experimental and ambitious, even for its time. It's weird in gameplay, story and also in its music it's weird, and I love it, it's just what I needed.

I hate to admit it, but I identified a lot with Squall, my high school self is still inside me after all and will never leave, and this whether I like it or not influenced a lot in how I enjoyed the story, so whether you like this story or not depends a little bit on your personality and your age in a way, I think... Well, the truth is that the story is very weird no matter where you look at it, I think what made me like it were its characters. Each character feels very human in a way, even in their interactions and dialogue. The story is entertaining mainly because of seeing how it is that said characters perform in the different events throughout the game, especially Squall, who is a misfit most of the time, and it's fun to see how he always confuses his companions by the way he is, or to see how he disappoints and annoys them... I thought it was a cool detail too how the decision dialogues make what your companions have to say fit very adequately to what a real person would say. Maybe a lot of times the characters can seem silly or flat, but looking at it from the perspective that they're just teenagers (if not kids) in the middle of all the conflict, I don't know, it all makes more sense than it seems at first glance. As I mentioned before, the story is pretty weird, though by the third disc it all made sense to me and somehow clicked and I liked it too much, maybe not one of the best stories, but certainly one with a lot of memorable moments. I guess it's important to keep in mind at all times that despite how realistic and serious the game can be at times, it's still a Final Fantasy game, so it's common to see out of the ordinary vehicles, characters and situations, for better or worse.

I'll save the gameplay for last this time as I plan to talk in depth about that because of how "complex" it is, so I'm going to talk about the music and graphics. And wow, they are really of a very "fine" quality to say the least. Speaking of the music, it was very different from the rest of the other games, especially in how varied it is. It's definitely a weird soundtrack, but it's one that I really liked. The battle theme and boss theme are very "different" from the rest of the series, but I think they've become my favorites. Sometimes more traditional themes are present which are always very memorable and relaxing themes. While sometimes we have songs that seem to belong to a different game, and I love them.

On the graphics at first I got the impression that they were bad, in fact worse than FF7, but once I got further into the game I realized that they are actually a huge improvement. The models look better in every way, they are no longer deformed humans but have a more realistic complexion, and the same goes for the monsters, which look great, all added with very well done animations for characters and monsters that, it's just awesome, it shows as a very high budget game with a lot of attention to detail for its time. Even the interfaces look very polished, and menu navigation is more fluid and responsive than ever. I like how in battles the command menu is very clean and minimalistic compared to previous titles, you can even hide the command menu by pressing "Select", which I really liked. The prerendered backgrounds now look more detailed and better done in general, I guess because the development team already had more experience in making them, which allows for a more diverse and different set of scenarios, it just looks great, and this looks very well complemented when the game mixes CGI cinematics with real time models, it looks amazing.

Now yes, regarding the gameplay this time the gimmick that has as FF game to distinguish itself from the other titles is the Junction System, which in short is a rare combination between the Espers of FF6, the Materia of FF7, and in turn serves as a class system, and to finish off, also serves as a replacement for armor and accessories, as here there are none. That's right, it sounds incredibly weird, and it fascinates me. For starters, the attributes of our characters depend on this, because how much attack or defense a character has is determined by the magic and the amount of it that we link to those attributes, for example, if we want to increase our base HP, linking a healing magic would be the most preferable. In addition to the stats, we can also link magic to our attacks or our defense against enemy attacks, for example, if we link ice to the attack, our attacks will be of that element and will inflict more damage to fire enemies, or on the other hand, if we link a status alteration magic to the attack, we can do things like every time we attack an enemy, we have a 50% chance of putting them to sleep. But well, in order to have these abilities, we have to make Junction with a guardian (a summon, like Ifrit for example) and the abilities or attributes available to modify depend on which Guardian it is, for example, a Guardian specialized in magic can give us the ability to make that every time we level up the magic attribute goes up 10% more than normal, but another guardian can unlock the command to defend, for example. I love it, this offers a huge degree of customization, I said it resembles FF7 Materia as the guardians have their own level independent of the character, so they are very "portable", and makes you can have strong characters even if their level is low.

Speaking of how to get magic, this time it is not learned by leveling up or buying it from stores, instead it is drawn from enemies, which makes it exciting every time we encounter an enemy to know what kind of new magic we can get from them. Magic can also be obtained from transforming objects if we have the ability to do that unlocked. Although in this system a problem can arise, and that is that many can get too distracted trying to steal 99 magic from enemies to have the stats at the maximum or to never "lack" that magic to have stock to spare, which is not really necessary in my opinion, because doing that is the equivalent of grind in a traditional RPG, It's something that only needs to be done if you really need it or if you're struggling a lot. Certainly by its very nature it is quite easy to break, and I like that, because if you want to make the game easier the same game gives you the freedom to do so and allows you to have the highest stats and not have to worry for the rest of the game about it. You can literally play the game the way you want and you set the difficulty to your own liking.

Another thing I should mention to finish covering this aspect of the game is that all enemies are at your level. Which means, the stronger your character is, the stronger the enemies will be, and therefore, the better the magic you can get from them. To be honest, it's an idea that I like a lot, as it made the battles against some bosses very interesting most of the time, the bad thing is that I think that on the other hand some bosses are very easy as they have a quite... pacifist behavior, I guess it was a rare case where some were very difficult and challenging, which I liked, and some others were very easy, which was a bit disappointing.

Conclusion
It's not a masterpiece as other games in this series were, Final Fantasy 8 instead dares to be different, to be unique, with gameplay that allows you to progress at the pace you want and a story that is sometimes ambiguous but hides a certain charm behind all the weirdness it can be. Final Fantasy 8 is imperfect, and somehow, I think that sometimes that's better than being a masterpiece.

Combat is significantly better than ff7 and the story while not on a big of a scale, is something i found more entertaining in this game. ff7 tends to have a little bit of story than a dungeon or bad gameplay segment. This game trys to mix the two and gives more dialougue and characters interacting than ff7. The dungeons are actually pretty cool most of the time and are different than ff7 where they were just corridors and mazes filled with random encounters. Another great thing about this game is that they give you a way early on to reduce random encounters by half or completely which makes it significantly better. The final boss sucks dick though. It can completely halt all progress and without save states and a guide, would have taken me a long time.

Originally I loved this game because it's absolutely nuts from start to finish. It stayed with me because it has a big heart. Even though FFVIII is an absolutely batshit maximalist soap opera about a ragtag group of amnesiac, hot dog-obsessed, time-traveling child soldiers who are hired to kidnap the president, it's also an achingly emotional game about an anti-hero who learns how to overcome his trauma and open his heart.

Replaying this game 20+ years later, I was struck by how unrelentingly sincere it is and how deeply it bares its soul. Then in the next scene, you get shot into space out of a giant cannon.