This review contains spoilers
Not going to lie but this was the hardest final fantasy game to get through for me. It's by no means bad, In fact I think it's an incredible RPG, but coming out of 7 and into 8 was a bit too jarring for me.
The biggest improvement from 7 is the production value and presentation. This is one of the best looking PlayStation games I've ever seen. The pre rendered background are much more detailed and includes more motion which makes the environments feel more alive. The FMV cutscenes are also have improved quality and there are much more of them. Making this the biggest FF game with 4 discs which if I was alive back then would've blown my mind. The graphics and character models are just so much more improved. They've gotten rid of the chibi over world designs, but now all of the characters are the same model and are more resident evil like. Which goes to show how much they've handled the hardware. This games graphics are also beautiful. This game must be played on a CRT TV with component or RGB output to get the fullest experience. The PS3 remake looks like crap with the smoothed out graphics in my opinion. Overall graphics are amazing.
One thing I'm not too sure about are the characters. The game focuses all on Squall (dumbass name) and the relationships he creates whit his other party members. But once Riona (I named her Rino :)) comes in the game then shifts to Squall's and Riona's relationship. Which is really well developed, but none of the other characters really get to shine here. They have their moments here and there but it really never leads up to something. While ff 7's characters all grew in some way throughout the journey, ff 8's characters never really seem too. Which sucks cuz I love all of them.
The villain is also kinda stupid well technically multiple villains idk. The way they explained the villain to me was kinda confusing. They pull the bait and switch mind control garbage which really annoyed me. While you saw Sephiroth's mental state decline throughout ff 7 making him more scary and threatening as time moved on, here, shes just here to be the evil person and I never really felt any of the steaks or anything. Overall great characters that needed more time in the spotlight
The story is also engaging and fun but there were a lot of parts that made me scratch my head. In the middle of the game they reveal that all of your party members except Rinoa grew up together in an orphanage which is supposed to add more depth to the characters but honestly it changes nothing and is never brought up again. They also reveal the the GF have been messing with their memories which made the forget all of that. I really wanted them to expand upon that but they never do. It's still a great story I just think a few things flew over my head.
But the worst thing about this game is the combat. They made it confusing and hard for no reason. They want you to focus on using your GF's and to strategies using junctions but using GF'S took way too long and made any combat too long and boring. They also got rid of the "all" command which was super frustrating and forced me to rethink my entire strategy WHICH WASNT FUN!! this game kept taking away what made the previous games so fun so you could I guess have more fun with more limitations? I hated the combat so much I just threw in some GameShark codes in the middle of disc 3 to get me through the rest of the game. I tried to do side quests to get me stronger but like 80 percent of them require me to do triple triade card game which I disliked a lot so I never bothered with it. But I guess that's how you got stronger so the whole game was just me struggling every battle.
I do wanna say I like this game. But it takes away too much from 7 for me to fully enjoy it. But it's a fantastic RPG that everyone with a PlayStation needs to play.
The biggest improvement from 7 is the production value and presentation. This is one of the best looking PlayStation games I've ever seen. The pre rendered background are much more detailed and includes more motion which makes the environments feel more alive. The FMV cutscenes are also have improved quality and there are much more of them. Making this the biggest FF game with 4 discs which if I was alive back then would've blown my mind. The graphics and character models are just so much more improved. They've gotten rid of the chibi over world designs, but now all of the characters are the same model and are more resident evil like. Which goes to show how much they've handled the hardware. This games graphics are also beautiful. This game must be played on a CRT TV with component or RGB output to get the fullest experience. The PS3 remake looks like crap with the smoothed out graphics in my opinion. Overall graphics are amazing.
One thing I'm not too sure about are the characters. The game focuses all on Squall (dumbass name) and the relationships he creates whit his other party members. But once Riona (I named her Rino :)) comes in the game then shifts to Squall's and Riona's relationship. Which is really well developed, but none of the other characters really get to shine here. They have their moments here and there but it really never leads up to something. While ff 7's characters all grew in some way throughout the journey, ff 8's characters never really seem too. Which sucks cuz I love all of them.
The villain is also kinda stupid well technically multiple villains idk. The way they explained the villain to me was kinda confusing. They pull the bait and switch mind control garbage which really annoyed me. While you saw Sephiroth's mental state decline throughout ff 7 making him more scary and threatening as time moved on, here, shes just here to be the evil person and I never really felt any of the steaks or anything. Overall great characters that needed more time in the spotlight
The story is also engaging and fun but there were a lot of parts that made me scratch my head. In the middle of the game they reveal that all of your party members except Rinoa grew up together in an orphanage which is supposed to add more depth to the characters but honestly it changes nothing and is never brought up again. They also reveal the the GF have been messing with their memories which made the forget all of that. I really wanted them to expand upon that but they never do. It's still a great story I just think a few things flew over my head.
But the worst thing about this game is the combat. They made it confusing and hard for no reason. They want you to focus on using your GF's and to strategies using junctions but using GF'S took way too long and made any combat too long and boring. They also got rid of the "all" command which was super frustrating and forced me to rethink my entire strategy WHICH WASNT FUN!! this game kept taking away what made the previous games so fun so you could I guess have more fun with more limitations? I hated the combat so much I just threw in some GameShark codes in the middle of disc 3 to get me through the rest of the game. I tried to do side quests to get me stronger but like 80 percent of them require me to do triple triade card game which I disliked a lot so I never bothered with it. But I guess that's how you got stronger so the whole game was just me struggling every battle.
I do wanna say I like this game. But it takes away too much from 7 for me to fully enjoy it. But it's a fantastic RPG that everyone with a PlayStation needs to play.