Your bests and worsts of FF VIII

[Squall]

IMO,

Best: FMVs, music, uniqueness of each character; how they all came from simply combat allies to close-knit friends at the end was really cool.

Worst: Junction system

[Firefly]

Bests: Music,Story/Plot,FMV's,Characters,etc.

Worsts:Imo... An extremely hard boss at the end lol!

[Xanatos]

*Best*

Junction System - It offers deep customization and has direct influence on your stats, you can approach any battle in several different ways, there's tactic feel to it.

Music - One of the best works of Nobuo Uematsu, it's my third favorite soundtrack as far as franchise goes.

Summons - The sheer amount of them, gorgeous animations and their role make summons of Final Fantasy VIII the best ones in franchise.

Exploration & Mini Games - There's a lot to do in Final Fantasy VIII, collecting cards, fun sidequests, optional challenges,..., also, Triple Triad has to be one of the most addictive mini games I ever played.

*Worst*

Story - It relies way too much on teen love for my taste. A lot is left unanswered leaving fans themselves to come with their own theories which by the way are shoot down by Square.

Characters - Due to main story Squall and Rinoa heavily overshadow other characters, the entire bunch is not fleshed out enough, lack of interesting NPC's.

[Judge Magistrate]

Best-music, characters, junction, and summons.

Worst-I'm with Xanatos on this, the story needed to be revised. I also was not a fan of the mini games at all.

[Dodie16]

I'm probably going to repeat most of what has been said, but here it goes anyway

Best:

Music- Always a plus in a FF game.

Locations- Pretty varied in terms of design. You had your big city places, tiny towns, resort locations, etc. and each one was pretty nice to explore. Balamb Garden, Fisherman's Horizon, Deling City are among my favorite places in the game.

Basically the entire first disk was pretty enjoyable.

Worst:

GODDAMN PROPAGATORS!

The way that a majority of the characters take a back seat when the game starts focusing on the romantic plot in the game. :/ Poor Irvine got the worst of it.

Time Compression- Hate this because you can't go back to any towns. Makes the fourth disk pretty boring after a while.

[Squall]

Best-music, characters, junction, and summons.

Worst-I'm with Xanatos on this, the story needed to be revised. I also was not a fan of the mini games at all.

The story seemed to lack substance. Certain aspects were extremely vague and downright awkward, so I agree that the writers did drop the ball on assembling a quality storyline.

[Lily]

The Bad

Lack of character development outside of the main pair. A couple of absurd plot twists

The levelling system of the mons, good idea but flawed

The characters looked really sketchy, fist time I played first thing I thought was yeah, pretty graphics, nice BG. What the **** were the chars made with, etchasketch?

The Good

I actually did really enjoy the story despite some of the wtf's and just ****ing stupid moments

The music (y)

Triple Triad. That game sucked so many hours of my life. Oh Il just have a quick game of cards..... 5 hours later

[Sakaea]

Best: everything, basically. One of my favorite FF games.

Worst: the chocobo mini game gets really irritating after a while, and the Random rule can be annoying when you're playing Triple Triad.
Other than that, epic game!

[Squall]

The Bad

Lack of character development outside of the main pair. A couple of absurd plot twists

The levelling system of the mons, good idea but flawed

The characters looked really sketchy, fist time I played first thing I thought was yeah, pretty graphics, nice BG. What the **** were the chars made with, etchasketch?

The Good

I actually did really enjoy the story despite some of the wtf's and just ****ing stupid moments

The music (y)

Triple Triad. That game sucked so many hours of my life. Oh Il just have a quick game of cards..... 5 hours later

Triple Triad was a lot of fun...once I became good at it lol. I guess all the hours of playing while trying to get the Lion Heart on disc 1 was worth it haha.

[Cereal~Killer]

Best: The two main leading player characters (Squall and Rinoa); Seifer; the summon animations.

Worst: Junction system; a little too futuristic for my likeness; Selphie's hair.

[Hero without a Name]

The Good:

The Music
Guardian Forces
Main Character Development
Balamb Garden story

The Bad
Having to draw magic from your opponets
Headmaster Cid (I thought he was a douche)
Lack of back story from other characters, I think the story itself is good but they focus too much of Rinoa and Squall. Most of the others FF's have backgrounds for all of their chracters, it seems everyone else was there just for show

[Squall]

The Good:

The Music
Guardian Forces
Main Character Development
Balamb Garden story

The Bad
Having to draw magic from your opponets
Headmaster Cid (I thought he was a douche)
Lack of back story from other characters, I think the story itself is good but they focus too much of Rinoa and Squall. Most of the others FF's have backgrounds for all of their chracters, it seems everyone else was there just for show

What made you think Cid was a douche? That's hilarious btw

[Mindu]

VIII was the first fantasy I played, and over time has become one of my least favourite of the series, although I still like it.

I liked the story, although have always thought that the main characters being from the same orphanage was too coincidental. Also, as many people have maintained over the years, the playable characters other than Squall and Rinoa are all marginalised some way into disc 2 and might as well have not been there. I also thought that Seifer's part in the story was a bit incomplete. He vanishes at the start of disc 4, and the next time we see him is with Fujin and Raijin in Balamb (who had abandoned him earlier), acting as though nothing had ever happened.

I didn't like the junction system despite its flexibility, simply because of the repertoire of drawing 100 of each magic to maximise stats. This was tedious as hell when trying to 100 Ultima, Meteor, Holy and Flare for everybody on disc 3. Having to draw so much also took away the fun of getting a new character. However, the patience required for all the drawing meant that the characters would always be stronger than necessary for each part of the game.

I also thought the limit break system was a bit flawed. I didn't like having to keep characters in critical condition to use their best attacks, and Aura wasn't available until later in the game.

What I loved was the concept of the Gardens and SeeD. It would have been amazing to have grown up in one of them, becoming a SeeD and living as a mercenary afterward.

[ZantetsukeN]

With FFVIII being my favourite game ever, I'm going to try to be as unbiased as possible here.

The good:
Story: I enjoyed the story immensely. It was the first game were I was pulled in by the story. OK, looking back, it does have holes, but I still love it.

The junction system: Not sure why this is so disliked. It was innovative, easy to use, and adds to the usual 'level up-increase stats' type of gameplay from previous entries. GF junctioning and abilities shine through in this game. Summons were pretty boring until this game.

FMV sequences: For its time, they are absolutely stunning. Even in this day and age with HD and all, you still have to appreciate how good the graphics are. Especially for a game that came out nearly 13 years ago.

Music: One of my favourite soundtracks of all time. Definitely the most epic boss music of any game ever.

Now, the bad:
Character development: I will agree with many of you. I wish, outside of Squall, Rinoa and Laguna (and to an extent, Seifer) we got more dev from other characters. Poor Selphie just didn't shine in this game (even if she is one of my favourites).

Magic: Magic as stat increasers are great. Magic as another means to deal damage? Not so much. Once you have enough spells for junction, all you need to do is attack really. Magic does become useless in that sense quite quickly, especially for Squall, whose ATK stat is very high to begin with.

[squall69]

i loved everything about this game
the worst part was the end credits when i finished it .

so i played it again , and again

[markandrewkinzett]

Best the Lionheart Limit Break. Worst as all the rest FF games too easy need to have a hard difficulty level cuz when I finsh the game Ultimecia and Greiver pose no threat.

[Enigma]

Best:

Junction system - I felt this gave you a lot of choice towards how you approached each battle. I especially loved being able to inflict the pain status ailment!

Triple triad - I know a lot if people will disagree, but I loved this! I was hooked on it instantly and to this day can't get the music out of my head.

Worst:

Disk 4 - I wasn't a fan of the whole time compression concept. It was definitely something different, but it was overly complicated in my eyes

[Squall]

Best:

Junction system - I felt this gave you a lot of choice towards how you approached each battle. I especially loved being able to inflict the pain status ailment!

Triple triad - I know a lot if people will disagree, but I loved this! I was hooked on it instantly and to this day can't get the music out of my head.

Worst:

Disk 4 - I wasn't a fan of the whole time compression concept. It was definitely something different, but it was overly complicated in my eyes

Triple triad SUCKED in the beginning until I got the hang of it. It grew on me and I spent many hours collecting cards.

[Enigma]

Triple triad SUCKED in the beginning until I got the hang of it. It grew on me and I spent many hours collecting cards.

I was the exact same way as you to begin with - especially when the random rule got introduced!
It definitely becomes addicting though.

[blackturbokitty]

Best: the music, the story line and characters.

Worst: the battle system and the junction system (that was kind of annoying) load times

[Squall]

I was the exact same way as you to begin with - especially when the random rule got introduced!
It definitely becomes addicting though.

I used to get destroyed until I developed a strategy. And yes, the rule changes were a pain as well. The best part of Triple Triad is once you get a significant amount of cards you can refine them into magic where you basically never need to draw.

[Sheechiibii]

Bests: Laguna 'nuff said . Oh, and the twists in the plot. The awesomeness of the characters, their development over the course of the game. The idea of a Seifer is pretty cool too, he's the main antagonist but isn't the evil one of the one they have to save the world from and that's a different prospect to other games. The music is so brilliant too.

Could-be-betters: The world map; I felt like there was a lot of map and not much in it, lots of land with not as much locations or caves or even different background, everywhere looked the same which got kinda boring. Ultimecia could have been better, I think she wasn't near as developed as she could have been and her motives and past are mostly a mystery.

Worsts: the characters pasts: I liked that they didn't know each other before the game and were growing into friends, the orphanage thing kind of ruined that a bit imo and didn't need to be there. The space thing as well but to a lesser extent and only the fact that it came out of nowhere. Never was it mentioned (as far as I can remember) that there was any space exploration in the game, or that they were technologically advance to have that. I realise that this is because only Esthar has this technology and they keep it to themselves but I think it did detract from the game and made me feel like it came out of nowhere. I mean, Esthar had this technology before they hid themselves away and yet nobody else in the world remembered about it? What about the people in Fisherman’s Horizon, surely they knew about it? Meh, the way they did it was bad.

Xx..xX

[KeybladeAngel]

Best: I actually like the junction system! but that could possible just be because Im all maxed out at level 40 and I barely started disc 2 lol.
Worst: The pixelized characters were horrible. I woulda liked to see their facial expressions. Didnt even bother to try to understand the triad mini game...

[Bubblegum]

Best : Characters, music, towns and cities and I mean Balamb Garden and FH come on they were stunning ! The Junction system, Gunblades.

Worse : The story was awfully rushed and badly-written. Characters were sadly pushed aside to focus on the S/R romance, side characters needed deeper back stories and some more development.

[Cyric]

Best: Esthar, Ragnarok, Triple Triad, Music
Worst: Lack of true story exploration (I would have loved to be able to explore more of the Gardens).

[Kurt Zisa]

Bests: Juctioning magic/gfs. I didn't really understand it at first but it's pretty much become second nature now. I love it when you junction high level magic to your characters and just watch how high their stats have been raised.

Playing as Laguna. He's a lot of fun and The Man with the Machine Gun is a great battle theme, I listen to it on my phone as i'm walking to lectures.

Triple Triad. Like Junctioning it was pretty hard to grasp at first but now i always run up to people to see if they can play.

Worsts:

Didn't like the world map that much, it can take ages to get anywhere and the camera angle can be pretty annoying at times.

Irvine was quite the let down, especially in the sniper mission.

[Sheechiibii]

Best:
Characters - I love most of the characters in this game and I think Squalls development is really, really good. Rinoa is also one of my favourite characters.
Plot - I love the story in this game, I love the twists and finding out extra stuff about the past.
Junction system - I love this. It's my favourite after the sphere grid. I love having so much control over what roles the characters are going to play in the pary.
Triple triad - love it. The first time I played I never bothered with it much but in later plays it's become an addiction.
Laguna and co - playing as a different set of characters in a different time period was awesome. I really loved those parts of the game.

Worst:
Ultimecia - I don't mind her as a villian I just wish we'd had more of a back story for her.
Wepons - not having much choices for development or new weapons.