Poll of the Day > Been playing the Final Fantasy VIII remaster lately

(+) Yeah! (+)

I played through it once, when it was new and never felt the urge to really revisit it again until listening to a Retronauts episode on it, where they made such a passionate case for it, I decided to give it another go, all these years later. I guess an upside to the remaster is being able to speed up the game, so I'm less annoyed by drawing spells from enemies, so I'm enjoying it a lot more now.

What I didn't expect was to be hit so hard by nostalgia from a game I wasn't all that keen on when it released. Funny thing is, it's less for the game and more for the time it came out. I graduated in 1999, so I remember how anticipated the game was my senior year, and then it released, finally, the fall after I graduated. During that time period, I really didn't do much, other than hang out with a couple of really close friends of mine, and we played FFVIII at my friend's house a lot. Not long after, they both joined the military, so this game reminds me of that like, last few months of feeling like a teenager before we all went our separate ways and had to grow up... which funny enough, "growing up" is kind of a big theme of the game.

Sorry about the long blog post, but, anywho... what are y'all's thoughts on FFVIII?

I think its overly maligned for what it really was. There were a ton of problems with the game but I really appreciate what they at least attempted to do even if they failed at it in a number of places.

I appreciate that they attempted to remove the need for grinding. Most FF games up until that point had pretty large swaths of the game devoted to having to grand up certain things like magicite in 6 or materia in 7. In FF8, I think they attempted to ameliorate that issue by having level scaling enemies, the junction system, and the SeeD system. Unfortunately that brought up a host of new issues. But I thought at the time at least that the junction system and seed system were pretty interesting even if I didn't understand junctions as a child.

Aesthetically I think its also my favorite FF game. It was sandwiched between the clunky graphical limitations of 7 and the goofy chibbyish style from 9. I tend to prefer the more realistic efforts. It also had some of my favorite FMV sequences from the series.

It also had, I think, the best iteration of a side game in the entire series and maybe any game with the card game. There were certainly problems with the rule sets which, I think, could have easily been tuned up to be less obtuse. But otherwise I thought it was a ton of fun and had real world implications through the various card transmutations and what not.

All in all, I still enjoy it for what it is. Its very flawed and a lot about it is incredibly frustrating but ultimately it was a positive experience for me.

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