Final Fantasy VIII -- does it live up the hype? No.
User Rating: 8.6 | Final Fantasy VIII (Platinum) PS
Final Fantasy VIII has perhaps the greatest problem that can occur for any game. It has to live up to a predecessor or in this case predecessors that have not just been well acclaimed, but also paved the way for all games of this type. For Final Fantasy VIII it has to go up against every game in the Final Fantasy series. To those of you familiar with the FF series, you know that it has basically defined the console role-playing genre. Hot off of the success of the game credited to revolutionizing the genre and making it what it is today, being FFVII, it had to step up and play little brother to that. Final Fantasy VIII was to be the best in the series, but failed to be just that. In fact, it was one of the most disappointing games in all of Squaresoft's game career. The game took all of the greatest aspects of FFVII, such as a cinematic plot, and coherant turn based battles, but it intertwined them with unnecessary depth and made the game a little overzealous. Generally speaking, FFVIII is not a bad game. In fact, it's a very good game. The story is fine and the main character is very cool, but the overall game at hand just is not as good as it could have been, especially given the success of the previous games. The battle system is plagued with what is the junction system. It isn't fun and it isn't necessary. The esper and materia systems of Final Fantasy VI and VII were much better and offered more rich gameplay with the battles. The dialogue in FFVIII is also quite bad. You'll find the characters more often than not standing there silently bantering between each other with comments such as "...". Yes, talk about high production values and great dialogue. Come on! Where are the great epic speeches we've come to know and love. Graphically, however, there is no match. As far as standards from 1999 go, there was nothing that even touched it. It was simply the best on the market and it stayed that way arguably the whole way through the Playstation's lifespan. Through thick and thing, Final Fantasy VIII is a good game no doubt. Is it amazing? No, it isn't. The gameplay isn't the best and there are some other cosmetic problems that need ironing out before this one could ever join the ranks of the classics in the series.
