You start off in a futuristic boarding school, this acts as your game tutorial, war base, even temporary means of transportation later on. If I had gone to a school this nice, I may have attended more than once a week...But seriously, you join the characters as the main hero, Squall, is putting the finishing touches on his SeeD training, and about to be dispatched into the real world for some missions. You can easily put the pieces of the puzzle together in your mind very early in the game regarding what the over all objective to the game is, but getting from here to there, from falling in love, to rediscovering your past and the connection you have with your teammates; it' all adds up to an epic and engrossing journey.
In my opinion, this game had the best graphics available on PS1. Final Fantasy IX had more detail, but seemed to be lower overall quality. The game employs a Junction system for battle, and your magic ability is sucked from random encounters using a Draw option. Some of it takes a little getting used to, but you'll get the hang of it in no time.
I've noticed a lot of the people that didn't enjoy this game, was mainly because they kept comparing it to VII. In and of itself, it's a great game and should be judged on an individual basis. The only downside I found was the ending - one giant "who didn't see that coming" scenario.
The only element of surprise were the hotdogs, I totally forgot about those. (Play it and you'll see.)
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