I beat Final Fantasy VIII! It only took me 26 years.

I got the Steam version of FF8 in the fall of 2023 and played to the last part of Disc 1. But then I began my 3DS arc and got sidetracked with other things for a while. I got back into FF8 in late August and finally finished the main quest last weekend.

I can totally see why FF8 is often regarded as one of the most polarizing games ever made. However, I found it to be a fun experience overall. Perhaps I should write a long, pointless review for it as I previously threatened.

I've decided that the world needs another Final Fantasy VIII review after all.

First, a word of warning: There are lots of spoilers here. If you don't want to read spoilers about a video game released in 1999, you would be wise to stop reading now.

Intro
As you probably know, I enjoy a good old-school JRPG every blue moon. I'd played the first seven Final Fantasy games, so Final Fantasy VIII was next on the list! FF8 is one of the most polarizing entries in the Final Fantasy series - in fact, it's probably one of the most polarizing video games period. It was a heavily-hyped game that almost outsold Final Fantasy VII, but it's also true that FF8 has its share of detractors.

Is FF8 the greatest things ever, or is it a swing and miss? The only way to find out is to play the game and write a needlessly long review for it!

I should note that I played the Steam PC version. It's based on the 2000 PC version and includes some more detailed character models than the original PS1 version. I noticed a handful of inconsequential graphical bugs, as well as some brief but significant slowdown during a transition in the final battle and when using Eden.

Characters
Squall Leonhart is the main character of Final Fantasy VIII. Squall is a teenager. He's a mercenary. He wields a sword that's also a gun. He's a bit of a grouch. He's the edgiest person in the history of video games.

Or maybe there's a bit more than meets the eye...


This is true.

Squall is not a particularly friendly dude in the opening act. His surly demeanor can be a bit grating at first. But over time, you'll realize there's a reason that Squall acts the way he does. And more importantly, you'll find that his character changes and grows. It's kind of rare for a video game character to achieve the level of character development that Squall does over the course of the game, and I really like how the game handles his growth.

The second-most significant character in the game is a girl named Rinoa Heartily. Rinoa first meets Squall at Squall's graduation party... and soon they fall in love and things get complicated. Also, she has a super-cute dog. I'm not the kind of person who requires a romantic angle to every video game, movie, or book, but I found Squall and Rinoa's relationship to be entertaining and endearing. Individual results may vary.


You met an adorable girl at a party. Your life is about to get a LOT more complicated.

Rounding out the party is Zell, a hyperactive brawler dude; Selphie, the happy-go-lucky head of the Garden Festival Committee; Quistis, a teacher in the midst of a career crisis; and Irvine, deadly marksman and perennial ladies' man. While Squall and Rinoa are the main focus for most of Disc 3, all characters get some time in the spotlight.

I like the character designs - there's a lot of care and attention to detail in their clothes, accessories, and designs. Every playable character gets multiple outfits during the course of the game, which is cool.

For most of the game, you'll have six characters in your party. This approach is a bit more focused than the larger casts seen in FF7 and especially FF6. While each character has a unique set of weapons and playing style, the characters' base stats don't differ too widely. For example, while Rinoa is sort of designed to be a magic user, you can easily turn her into a capable physical attacker if you junction the right abilities to her.

A few characters are playable temporarily - for various reasons. Even though they're not in your party for very long, they get their own unique weapons and playing style. They even get their own Limit Breaks - even though you might never get to see them unleash them. It's cool to see this kind of extra detail put into the characters.

Story
The game opens in a Japanese-inspired high school designed to train young people to be mercenaries. Squall and his buddies go to classes, study for tests, and moan about their school's hot dog supply chain issues. But pretty soon, Squall graduates and starts experiencing the real world. Squall and friends get deployed to a series of world conflicts, taking on increasingly complex and dangerous missions.


Squall and friends take a trip to this interesting locale early in the game.

At first, these missions seem kind of random, and it's hard to understand how they fit into the grand scheme of things. Things get even wackier when Squall and the other SeeDs keep having bizarre dreams where they find they're in the bodies of strangers they've never even met. But eventually you begin to untangle the threads connecting these seemingly unrelated events - and learn that something a lot bigger is at stake.

The plot offers a lot of twists and turns. A few bombshells get dropped a little too suddenly - perhaps most infamously, there's a major plot twist at the middle of Disc 2 that kind of comes out of left field.

A few interesting angles don't get as much airtime as they deserve. For example, midway through Disc 3 you'll observe a cataclysmic event, one powerful enough to destroy much of the world. That sounds like a big deal! It does cause some panic and causes a fraction of the game world to have an ominous red sky, but this event doesn't even trigger a boss fight specific to it, even though it seems like exactly the time and place that would have a big battle.

The ultimate villain of FF8 is a bit of an oddball in that we don't even hear her name until we're fairly deep into the game, and we're never told much about her backstory or why she wants to take over the world - and all of time and space to boot. On the other hand, this makes her all the more mysterious and menacing. (I have my own theory about the villain's motivations, but this theory isn't terribly exciting.)

FF8 has one of the coolest opening sequences of any video game, and it gives us a long and satisfying ending.

Final Fantasy VIII's setting combines fantasy mainstays with modern and sci-fi elements. As with almost any JRPG, you have your typical monsters and dragons and magic and ancient ruins. However, many of these fantasy elements are explained away by modern technology - for example, people are able to wield magic thanks to technological advances! The game worlds are full of artifacts of modernity - from trains and cars to more recent developments like solar energy and computer networks. The FF8 universe also has access to some newfangled tech that wasn't around in 1999 - or in 2025 for that matter. For example, it seems that getting launched into space is a comparatively simple endeavor in Esthar.


Sometimes you just gotta take a break and get in a good old-fashioned hockey fight while being radically out of uniform.

Each area of the game world has its own unique atmosphere. Most of the game seems to be inspired by classical European architecture, while Esthar looks much more futuristic. The game puts a lot of detail into world-building. For example, it's cool how Galbadia Garden has its own hockey rink, occupied by hockey-themed enemies that don't appear anywhere else in the game.

Gameplay
Just as FF8's world is a lot different from classic Final Fantasy games, its gameplay is a drastic departure from previous FF games - and JRPGs in general. Perhaps most radically, there's no equipment, Magic Points, or treasure chests. You don't even get money from beating enemies - instead, you receive a salary from Balamb Garden every time you walk a certain number of steps.

Instead of equipping weapons, armor, and headgear to your characters, you customize your characters by "junctioning" powerful beings called Guardian Forces (hereafter referred to as GFs - they are most definitely not your girlfriend). GFs are powerful beings that help your characters ascend to new heights. By junctioning a GF, you can temporarily increase a certain stat, power up your attacks and strengthen your resistances, use special moves, boost stat growths when leveling up, create powerful items, and summon powerful attacks in battle. It's a little complicated and tricky to explain, but it's safe to say that you're in for a hard time if you don't take advantage of your GFs.


FF8's story is a bit heavy at times, but it's also a game where you fight a giant cactus in the desert and convince him to join your party.

Magic also works differently in FF8. To use magic in battle, you'll usually need to "draw" it (that is, stealing it) from enemies. Alternatively, you can obtain some magic from draw points in the game world or by refining certain items. Drawing can be tedious, but it's important to draw powerful magic or (in rare cases) GFs from enemies. You can cast magic in battle, but most of the time you'll want to keep magic so you can improve your stats. One small irritation is each character can only hold up to 32 types of magic, and you might have to spend some time shuffling magic among different characters. Thankfully, the game has an option for switching junctioned magic between characters.

Squall's special weapon uses an "action command" - if you press the trigger button at the right time, you'll automatically earn a critical hit. Some GFs can be boosted in a similar way. This helps make battles more interesting - I like it when JRPGs find ways to make turn-based combat more interactive.

I'd say that FF8 is not a very difficult game - with caveats. There are a number of ways you can build characters that are insanely powerful, especially if you spend a lot of time playing Triple Triad. More on that later. On the other hand, the game can get pretty tough if you fall behind.

As trainees at a military school, your goal is to solve problems without resorting to needless bloodshed. And fittingly, the FF8 universe does not reward you for fighting unnecessary battles - in fact, you're not careful, the game actually punishes you for gaining levels! This might sound weird, but it's because enemies level up as you do. So grinding out levels isn't going to make the game easier - and it could make the game significantly harder if you're not drawing good magic and catching GFs when they become available.

FF8's final boss is harder than the FF6 or FF7 counterparts. The final boss and the final dungeon have a few unique gimmicks that significantly alter the "rules" the game had followed earlier. For example, the final boss randomly chooses the party members that will face her! You might be in trouble if the final boss chooses your under-leveled or ill-equipped party members in her fantasy draft - though this problem can be mitigated with a reset. Also, I found the final dungeon's main gimmick to be ingenious.

Some elements of FF8 are not very intuitive - it's definitely the kind of game where you might want to take a glance at a guide occasionally. The bosses and puzzles aren't all that tough, but many game elements are not explained in game. In particular, there's a lot of content that becomes permanently missable. The process for determining SeeD rank is rather opaque - it's like being in a frustrating class and not knowing why you got the grade you got! You might be surprised that your SeeD rank can decrease at seemingly random moments (one way is by running from battles - fleeing even a few times can hurt your score).

One huge part of FF8's gameplay is a card game called Triple Triad. Whenever you meet people, you can challenge them to a fun card game. Triple Triad isn't extremely complex at first, but changing certain rules can make things get complicated. Triple Triad is completely optional, but you'll need to play it if you want to access certain rare items.

Graphics
FF8's graphics are a step up from FF7's. Gone are the slightly goofy Lego-like characters with less-than-realistic proportions!

The game's FMVs are extremely well-done - they were cutting-edge for 1999, and many of them still look really cool.


Rinoa looks like she's in a bit of a pickle. She's probably not thinking about how much time the developers spent on rendering her arm warmers.

FF8's towns and dungeons make abundant use of prerendering. Many of these prerendered backgrounds are a treat for the eyes, but every once in a while they can be a bit tricky to navigate.

The grandiose animations when summoning GFs are always entertaining - though some of them take a while to run, and there's no way to end them early.

Music
Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack offers plenty of memorable music and a lot of variety. Overall, FF8's soundtrack is a bit darker and more melancholic than most previous FF games, though there's a bunch of upbeat songs as well. I can't say that Mr. Uematsu hits a home run with every track, but there's a lot of great pieces.

Classics like "Eyes on Me" and "Liberi Fatali" are often regarded as favorites - video game music with vocals was still a bit of a novelty in 1999. The "Engrish" in "Eyes on Me" had the potential to be a little corny, but Faye Wong's singing is top-notch and is a great fit for the mood of the song. The more militaristic marches - like "The Landing", "Movin'", and "The Stage is Set" - are excellent at setting the tone for some of the more intense moments of the game.

And perhaps most importantly, FF8 has good battle music. I don't like FF8's regular battle music quite as much as FF7's, but it's still a very good track. And that's important, because you'll be hearing that song a lot. The Laguna sequences get special battle music - "The Man with the Machine Gun", which is at or close to the top of my list of favorite video game battle themes. Finally, Mr. Uematsu definitely hits a home run with the final boss music.

Replay
I remember when FF8 came out. I didn't have a PlayStation so I never played it (until very recently, that is), but I remember seeing the box art and assuming the game was a teen drama where Squall and Seifer were fighting for Rinoa's affections! My initial assumption was a little off base, obviously.

What this means is I came into this game surprisingly unspoiled - I knew the main character was Squall, and that someone named Julia liked to play the piano in some kind of alternate dimension, and that the final dungeon was called Ultimecia's Castle. That was about it. This is a sharp contrast to my FF7 playthrough, where I had learned pretty much the entire plot of the game before I ever played it!

Playing FF8 without being spoiled did enhance my enjoyment of the game. However, if I had infinite free time (spoiler alert: I don't), I'd love to play the game again now that I know how the story goes. FF8 drops a lot of bombshells - and subtle foreshadowing - throughout the game, and it was easy to miss some important things without knowing where the plot leads. I'd also love to spend more time playing Triple Triad and catching up on things I missed on my first playthrough.

Closing
More than a quarter-century has passed since FF8 was released. The world has changed in many ways since then! Your life has probably changed as well - some of the people reading this probably weren't even born in 1999. FF8's universe is very different from the real world - and that's probably a very good thing! But many aspects of FF8 feel timely today - the FF8 global political situation, with all its ever-shifting entangled alliances and rivalries, reminds me of the post-USSR and post-9/11 world, minus the evil sorceresses from the future. Similarly, I see certain parallels between the main characters and people I've known in my real life. I like how FF8 creates a very human cast - a bunch of teenagers, with all their imperfections and hopes and dreams, thrown into a messy world they don't understand at all. One friend has said that FF8 is one of the rare games that really seems to think about its characters' mental health - an interesting argument that felt on the nose.

As mentioned earlier, FF8 is a particularly polarizing game. As the sequel to FF7, it had a hard act to follow. And FF8 dared to be different - its setting and especially its gameplay were a radical departure from previous games in the series. Looking through a modern lens, I found FF8 to be a lot of fun. Were there some things I would adjust if I was making the game? Of course. But in an age where so many games are reboots and remakes, it's refreshing to play a game that offers a unique gameplay experience. FF8's story almost dips into camp at times, but in the end I found the characters memorable and relatable in a unique sense. I wouldn't want every game to be FF8, but if you've never played FF8, or you played it and gave up on it too soon, you ought to give it a try.

Beautiful review, Vinny. Maybe I should give it a run-through at some point...