Do yourself a favor: Quit playing about halfway through the third disk. Otherwise, this is a very fufilling game.
But onto the game itself. Departing from the norm, Final Fantasy VIII does not use MP or Magic Points. This makes for smoother, less threatening battles. But that's not it! Summons still cause the same amount of damage as in previous Final Fantasies, but you can use them as much as you want! This may sound teriffic, and it is for the majority of the game. Unfortunately, the battle system gets old. REAL old. Your battles will soon become overreppetitive, watching the same summon animations over and over and over. Pretty boring, to say the least. The boredom usually results in running away from an enemy. Another double-edged blade in this game are the stats of your enemies. Depending on your level, all enemies in the game will be a certain pre-determined level, which the game expects you to beat at your level. This also makes the battle system get old as well. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Ahhh, the things we take for granted.
But, as we all know, the reason we play Final Fantasy games are for the storyline. Now, I'm not going to spoil it for you, but it is very similar to VII. Closed, hardened mercenary falls for potentially world-saving magic caster, and it turns out some psycho finds some ancient power to conquer the Earth. The game maintains its mystical feel until you travel to the futuristic city of Esthar. Then the game collapses. Seriously, every sucks from there. The storyline to the gameplay. The only thing that kept me playing was to get to the makeout FMV. It wasn't that great.
Now, regarding sound and graphics, I was impressed. Very catchy video game music. You will find yourself feeling like a huge nerd when you end up buying the video game soundtrack. But hey, it's good. The FMV's are amazing though. Seriously. Unmatched to this day. I'd say it's about equal to FFX. That's how good it is.
So all in all, Final Fantasy VIII is a great achievement in video game history. But to me, it seemed like the makers of the game stopped putting their full effort into it when it came around to ending it. It's defidently worth a play though.