more often than not when a final fantasy game's mechanics get changed up for something a bit more experimental it doesnt work. final fantasy 8 is no exception lmao
playing this game was a fucking nightmare. girlfriends make us strong, and thats the core mechanic of this game. however junctioning them, magic, and abilities, and having to switch them back and forth between forced party members is such a tedious pain in the ass. there are so many times in this game where its like "change to zell and his gang" for two fights then it switches you back to squall and his gang, and it takes multiple minutes everytime to switch over all my GFs!!! i'm not leaving GFs and magic on characters im not using bc i'm just weaker for it with my main team! even in the final battle its not like you actually NEED everyone, you just let the people you dont want for the fight die so you can use the actual good characters (Squall, Irvine, and Rinoa). on the magic front of things, drawing it from draw points and monsters is fun in theory but just sucks the fun out of the game if you want to play optimally you will draw all the valuable spells 99 times from every enemy. this makes spell quantities pointless, but again, youd be stupid not to do this because it's just the optimal and easy thing to do. and it takes ages! leveling up in this game is basically pointless because the stat ups are minimal, but they can be worth it when you have GF abilities like STR and HP Bonus on your best boy Irvine Kinneas. However when the game deems Squall too high levelled then the amount of XP you get from battles dramastically decreases... for everyone. so if Squall is overlevelled, NO one can level up anymore. tbh I didnt check BUT i'm pretty sure you also have to take Squall with you so you cant get out of this... maybe i'm wrong but i will not be playing this game again to find out! also the game kinda wants to level its enemies with the party; this isnt necessarily a bad thing, but the devs decided that enemies of different level-tiers drop different loot. this means it can be very easy to obtain certain materials from enemies in the early game, but once you level up a bit too much some items because borderline impossible to get your hands on. this SUCKS!!!!!!!!! i could go on and on about all the weird gameplay decisions they made in this game that make it frustrating and not fun a lot of the time, but the gameplay experience overall wasnt TERRIBLE it was just really, really annoying at the worst of times, and reminiscent of better final fantasys at the best of times.

all of that being said, the story in this game is the thing that kept me going. i am, famously, an FF7 fanboy which i love to death. i think that games story is just like, the bee's knees. i love its down-to-earth human action, its lack of divine intervention, its relatable anti-capitalist pro environment message, i Love it. this game leans more into anime asthetics to tell a more personable story about, essentially, teenagers falling in love with themselves, and then other people. its cute! its good even! squall is genuinely insufferable for a really long time, but his inner monologue throughout the game really does a lot to explain why he is the asshole he is. the game even lets you choose how much you want to play into with dialogue options. i didnt want to play squall in anyway other than how i saw him; an asshole; so for a lot of the game i always picked the dickhead options like "whatever" and "shut up" etc etc. but as the game progresses and squall is confronted with love and earnest attempts to open him up, i felt the need to respond in kind, and i enjoyed that i could allow squall to be more open with his friends and be honestt. the simple character arc over 40 hours genuinely works very well! i dont necessarily like all of the characters (sorry selphie) but there's a lot of good stuff in here. the world is more explicitally fantasy/sci-fi and less relatable. Midgar and Shinra's politics in FF7 are much more laid out the state of people in the world made clearer, but in FF8 there's conflict as a plot device that doesnt apply to the characters and its fine. this game also has the interesting idea of having an alternative storyline playing out, with Laguna Loire, Kiros, and Ward. dude, i love Laguna. he's such a himbo. i like his battle theme, i like how handsome he is. I like how he is the polar opposite to Squall. it's a really nice idea! the gameplay doesnt quite compliment it really; i feel like it would have worked better with FF7's materia system where the other party have their own stash of stuff and you dont need to worry about rejunctioning them. then when the characters finally rendevous maybe you can even have them join up for one fun bossfight or something! still, a lot of good and fun story stuff. i like the Shumi, the Moomba, Fisherman's Horizons was fun. I wish there was a bit more with Seifer. I like how the world is populated with goofy, funny characters that Squall just has to react to. i love the idea of stone-hearted Squall looking at Shumi building a statue, KNOWING he needs to assassinate the sorceress, and just going "I could help them build a statue" for no reason. i love that; its great

so thats final fantasy 8. its pretty weird. if it had better gameplay mechanics i probably WOULD play this again, but as it stands, i dont want to go through that shit again bc it suuuuucks. Irvine Kinneas best boy forever; moomba OUT