Final Fantasy VIII

Ok i know its not the one that most people will say that its there favorite but it is a very decent game and one of if not the favorite game of mine.

Ok so lets throw some facts out there:

The developer/publisher was Square. The game was created under the Game Director Yoshinori Kitase( other notable games were FF6-7, Chrono Trigger)
It was released in the US for PS1 on Feb. 11, 1991. By March 31,2003 it had sold 8.15 million copies.

Ok so enough with that boring tidbit.

The Plot: It starts out with the main charecter Squall Leonhart(best charecter ever). He is a student in the Balamb Garden(Garden is like a training facility for SeeD(Specially trained Garden Agents)that people and government hire to do jobs.Mercs essentially.) You start out in the infirm because you and Seifer Almasy(lifelong rival) have it out in the training area and gave each other scars on your faces. Your instructor Quistis Trepe comes to pick you up. Later on you go to a cave and get your first G.F.(Guardian Force. More on these later.) Then you go on a mission and end up fighting the Galbadian Army in a city called Dollet. In Dollet you fight two members named Wedge and Biggs(Some diehard FF players may recognize these names from Final Fantasy 4,6,7,8,10,12). Squall succeeds in his mission and is accepted into SeeD. You meet up with a girl named Rinoa Heartilly(Squalls love interest(and my Waifu) Rinoa is with an anti-Galbadian group named Timber. Headmaster Cid(Headmaster of Balamb Garden) orders Squall, Zell Dincht(Spunky and slightly annoying member off SeeD. Squall and Zell were partners in the defending of Timber.) and Selphie Tilmitt(same as Zell) to go with Rinoa to help her in anyway possible. Events go awry and they end up teaming up with Quistis and Irvine Kinneas(womenising sharpshooter)to save the world.

Instead of materia like in 7, 8 uses a stocked up magic system. You have 3 ways to get magic. 1 Draw from enemies/bosses. 2 Draw from visible and hidden draw points throughout the game. Or 3 refine from items using G.F. skills. You can have up too 100 of each and up to 32 different spells. Using G.F. you can junction magic to strengthen your charecter. Special moves in this game are called "Limit Breaks". Some charecters limits will change as you acquire new weapons, read certain magizines, use specific items on charecter or have certain ammo in inventory. Weapons in this game is different were instead of finding them from drops you get "Weapons Monthly" a magizine that tells you what items you need to upgrade your weapon. You collect different G.F. throughout the game by drawing them from bosses or by going on side quests to aquire them.

So i think ive bored everyone enough with this so if you'd like to know more PM me or just google the game. But id like to hear other people thoughts on this game.

Mixed thoughts, I suppose.

There are alot of good aspects to this game. I really enjoyed the limit break system, and how you were able to abuse the aura spell in order to pull off several limit breaks in a row. I also liked how they changed with your weapon upgrades, it was fun working my way up to Lionheart or Squall's little combo dealies. The story itself was sorta 'eh' at points, but enjoyable, and I can honestly say that Triple Triad is one of my all-time favorite mini-games. Unlike that stupid card game in FFIX, it actually makes sense and is easy to master with a bit of math knowledge.

There is also some bad. After the materia system, the junction system was a bit of a let down. As a whole, it probably had a bit more customizability in exchange for user-friendliness, so it is certainly a pain to deal with towards the beginning of the game. After a while, you get used to it like everything else, but I never did like having to spend all that time drawing magic from enemies. God forbid you forgot to draw a summon from a boss. And why the hell are there monsters on the moon? Well, that's not really a bad thing, just seems...weird, doesn't it? Moon monsters.

This was probably the easiest FF to level in, I reached 100 for all my characters ridiculously fast. Didn't realize until later that I should have had GF skills equipped in order to gain better stats, elsewise you cap out and all of a sudden you can't raise 'em anymore. On a whole, not exactly a bad thing, but it can be kind of a pain in the ass for some of the weaker characters. Oh, this one had some of the best summons, like Tonberry King and Doom train, lotsa fun. Also, one of the best FF music comes from this game. My favorite is 'Compression of Time'. It's relaxing.

All in all, while this isn't my favorite Final Fantasy, I wouldn't put it at the bottom of the list either. There is alot of good here, and many people write it off immediately as bad because that's what 'everyone said'. They should give it another try.

Oh, and Quistis is hot.

I know a lot of people who like Final Fantasy 8 more than 7. (Screw the Roman numerals; it's easier to just do numbers.) They prefer the story, the music, the fighting/magic system, and the characters, and I understand them completely. FF8 was a really great game.

The only problem I had with the game came from my own problem - I like to boost my characters up. In FF8, I ran into big problems because I would be on that fucking beach at the start of the game for three hours (if not longer), leveling up my two characters. I'd be good enough to beat three Ifrits at once, and I'd still be leveling up. Usually in RPGs, I level up in an area until it becomes boring. And by boring, I mean, until I can kill all the monsters with one hit and no trouble at all. Since the monsters level up in FF8, I couldn't do this. So, whenever I played the game, I would always get Squall and the teacher chick up to level 30 before finally ripping myself away to kick Ifrit's ass, and that caused me to lose steam before even starting the story. But like I said, that was my problem, not the game's.

inb4 FF7 fanboys and "FF7 IS THE BEST EVAR!"

Yea i loved Triple Triad. I spent alot of time playing that alone. I kinda wish they had made a game of that vut meh. And i admit at first some aspects of the game confised me but i was a quick pickup. And theres tricks for drawing magic from enemies and also about the G.F.s theres mini-bosses in Ulticima's Castle that you can draw all the G.F.s you missed. Well accept ones like Doomtrain, Tonberry King, Bahamut, Eden, Cactuar. Those must be attained by the required sidequests.And yea i was disappointed in the short time required to max your level and the simplicity of just using aura to get limit break(tho it does come in handy). And i loved the music in this. "Eyes on Me" was fav song.

^This.
I liked 8, mainly because of squall, the quiet loner guy.

FF:8 is the one game from the series that I own and I've played the least. Basicaly because it was a copy and it would always stuck for a random amount of time (from 4sec to 12min) every here and then on cutscenes, or the black screen that indicated a random encounter would just stay there taunting me. Still, I recall a few interesting points that haven't yet be mentioned and might interest people.

First of all, it's got a really big amount of side quests and things to discover that even though they won't turn the tides of the game, they're still part of its magic. From the village of those orange fury animals (I think you meet the first of their kind while controling Laguna in the past) to Selphie's personal data at her original Garden and from the UFO (!) hunt to Zell's romance with the librarian girl. It's got enough stuff that you'll definitely miss on your first time finishing the game and some that you won't find even after your third attempt.

The Triple Triad card game is surely a "game inside a game". I must admit that at first you might want to just skip playing it 'cause it's far more complex than the FF:IX's one. Elemental terrain that powers up the cards, rules that change depending on the region you're playing it and the rare cards you'll be getting from defeating certain players. It's exactly as exciting as it was described in the previous posts.

Gameplay wise, there were a few issues that...intrigued me. The Square spam to boost the GF's attack, the R1 (if I recall) that when pressed at the right time during the hit it'd increase the damage done by the players' Attack (I'm 95% sure it worked on more than just Squall. I've managed to get it to work for Rinoa, Selphie and Zell [the hardest one] so I suspect it'd work for everyone). The Draw system would be Ok for a normal player I suppose but... for me it was quite troublesome. 'cause I just had to Draw one full stack of a magic I first encounter for each one of the character (that's a total of 99 x 3 = 297). Don't ask me why, it's the voices inside my head. And with the way junction works (Certain GFs allow you to empower your Stats with Magic, p.ex. add a stack of Fire magic on your Strength and it'll go up for quite much) ensured that I never ever used any magic at all. 'Cause I wanted to always have the full stack (99) junctioned. I'm just saying how I did it, it's definitely not the proposed style of play.

Oh, on an important side note: Don't try looking for armor/trinkets. You can only change weapons.

And yes, the story is far fetched at some points

On the whole, it's a game that FF fans must play. The atmosphere (technology, timeline, lifestyle) is different from the typical Final Fantasy games. The characters get a quite interesting development too.
Still, I think I might have enjoyed FF:VII more.

This one failed to strike a chord with me, but I played it through and did everything in it to the end. Lately, I've been thinking of giving it a second chance.

As it stands right now, I just didn't feel too attached to any of the characters. Except for Laguna, I just felt that he was awesome. The romance angle didn't hold my interest either. Then there's stuff like the Draw system that makes collecting magic a tedious chore.

I felt the Junction system was pretty good for allowing you to make adjustments with character stats and things like that. The only problem I have with that, is that the most powerful magic tends to increase stats the most, and using said magic decreases the according stat. That makes using magic even more useless than using it back in 7. Having the enemies scale to your party's level was a great idea, you just need to make sure you are immune to Lv. 5 Death.

I heard rumors when the game came out in America that Japan was planning to release a real Triple Triad card game. Does anyone know if that actually happened?

One thing I really liked about FF8 was that it wasn't as tedious to get the most powerful weapons and stuff as it was in FF7. In 7, to level your materia up, you'd have to either fight shitty monsters for hours upon hours or venture deep into the North Cave and risk death while fighting tough monsters. Those fucking tonberries, man, they just made it not worth it by obliterating my party, even at level 99. But in 8, you didn't have to worry about that stuff. Plus, the sidequests were some of the best I've ever seen in an RPG. Fighting Cactuars to get the Giant Cactuar GF? Fighting tonberries to get the Tonberry King GF? Awesome! Well, maybe the rewards for just awesome, but it was still better than breeding a million fucking chocobos and hoping you get a gold one (or watching your friend get a gold one on his third try when you've done it thirty times and haven't gotten one).

Oh it's real, but good luck finding those cards these days.

Dam thats awsome. wish i could have those cards. And as Zero stated yes there is more than meets the eye in this game. Theres many romances, shocking revalations and side quests that far exceed jus playing the story line. And yes you can do the power up move with r1 with every charecter just got to be good timing. And i just made sure i was immune to the basics. Death,berserk,zombie. And as Ranter i too rarely used magic but thats my prefered style. Another thing that caught my eye which no one has touched base on was the cutscenes. This game had graphics that i personally throughout playing ps1 games were the best of its time. but im glad to see many people share my view on this game. very cool

i really like how the story gradually changed squall and the romantic event are really lovely and the endng is really really good and romantic
speaking about the battle systems i liked ff7s battle system than ff8 since the junctions are powerful yes but the materias are much better though the limit break of squall is overkill

Lol but i loved the like 18 hit limitbreak