Despite some recent cultural re-evaluation, FF8 still lives in the shadow of FF7, its cooler, and, quite frankly, better older sibling and it's easy to see why—the party characters are on average a little less endearing (despite being in the minority in terms of liking Squall and RInoa I still hate Irvine), the story is a little less interesting, and the anarchism has gone from blowing up power stations to writing zines.

That said, the game excels around the edges story-wise—I'd argue that the NPC chatter is some of the most well-done in the genre and creates a lot of interesting texture and the background artwork for the game looks fantastic (games should do more fixed-camera-angle stuff imo). This sounds like it's damning with faint praise but I promise it isn't—it's these sort of things that help the game excel in specific moments.

FF8's mechanics are notoriously easy to exploit and misinterpret—shoutout to my friend who hates this game because he never got Card Mod—but I appreciate the swings that the Junction System tries to take, which are annoying to start with and a joy once you've got your head around the terminology.

All in all, it's a bit of a mess, but an endearing one.
(if you look like seifer dm me on twitter thx)