So I finished FF8 after 22 years

It’s a long time to finish a game. I bought this game from a friend as a kid when I was around 12 in 2002. It was my first story-rich JRPG (I think the other JRPG I played was Pokemon at the time). I fell in love at the time. FF8 was pulling me in with a story and a world I could never have imagined. I could not have read this in a book. The world felt big, and there were tons of little secrets and interactions. As a kid, Squall was the epitome of cool to me, loner, deadly, and sarcastic. Rinoa, was a fair maiden, without a single blemish. I loved them both. They might be the first and only characters I had a “crush” on.

But there was a problem. My friend scammed me and the disk was scratched. In fact, all 4 disks were scratched. In random cutscenes, my trusty PlayStation would crash. That means, at first I could only play up to Dollet Tower. To pass sections, I would give my memory card to another friend, Yacine. Yacine was a tall nerdy guy, who knew the script of every PlayStation Final Fantasy by heart and would tell me of his awesome adventures. He would play the section I was getting stuck in, get to a save point, and give me back the memory card.

I would miss a lot, and for this reason, I never got past the second CD and gave up. Then, in the summer of 2006, I went to my Grandma, on the opposite side of France. My grandma is a bit of a gamer. She gifted me a Super Nintendo in 1996, with Super Mario All-Stars, and I think that event contributed to who I am today. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she owns a PlayStation, with Final Fantasy 8! I retired my own trusty PlayStation, her lens motor not working anymore. I then spent my summer stay glued to the game and made up to CD3 before having to get back home. I tried to finish the game on emulator before, but I never got far and I got disinterested.

Until a couple of month ago, when I booted the game on my Vita (to play the PSP Version). I finally beat the game this month. And I need to write my thoughts.

Presentation

Developed after FF7, looks good. All characters are animated and have expressive movement. Game character models are not chibbis this time, and it helps to sell them as late teenage soldiers. When you’re not on the map, your characters traverse beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds. Sometimes, you even traverse animated cutscenes as it switch to a background and it looks pretty nice. I’ve been listening to music for years, even learning a couple of the guitar, so I can’t be objective about the music. I like them a lot.

I lack words to describe the style of the game. The architecture and the mood of the game is some sort of 50’s future. Cars, buildings, monuments, everything have curves, lines, and details. Everything is plastered with arabesques and tribals, it’s really great. I guess you could describe the style as “maximalist” in a way?

The game is very expressive, using classic textbox for dialogues, but varies their color, rhythm, and placement. Characters have a wide range of animation well used to convey much more than they say. You cannot follow the story by simply reading the script, you need to see who is doing what. I appreciate that despite being a high-budget game, they didn’t take players for children, and let them infer characters' thoughts.

The number of battlers is a little on the low side, but they all have their own animation and gimmick. You have a lot of VFX with different magics, but also small cutscenes for every GeForce attacks. All of them are very cool (BUT SO SLOOOOW).

During the game, you have to use computers, and they all have their own interface, which is often very stylized. Far off current website design :D.

Mechanics

I enjoyed FF8 mechanics for the most part.

You have the traditional ATB system, with two differences. Every character is able to junction Guardian Forces (Summons) and Magics. Associating Magic with a Stat gives you more of these Stats. I think Junctioning is fun, unlocking abilities is fun, and making up your bullshit is very fun. I did not play the card game, I skipped the majority of the side quests, and I drew only moderately strong magic and managed to beat the game, by abusing Magic and Triple.

The game scales with your level, meaning that you can beat the game with very strong magic and a very low level. As a result, the game can be quite easy, until it forces you into a lot of random encounters. I believe that, if you get the reduced encounter rate from one of your GF (Guardian Force) early, you would be able to stomp the game. It also means you have 0 grinds BUT:

Despite how fun the building is in FF8, Drawing feels TERRIBLE. Having to spend 20 minutes sucking up 3 magic from an encounter is the worst. The XP requirement of the game has been dumped here.

Close to that is animation length. Drawing animation is long! GF is long! Magic is long! Every time you do one of those actions, you get an unescapable 3-second animation. On my 50h playthrough, 5 or 10 must be animations. I heard the remastered version have cheats and you can increase speed. Just use that, I like to play on my Vita, but I want this time in my life back.

World

The world in FF8 is surprisingly tiny, from today’s perspective. Maybe because I am an adult, and I lost the ability to imagine the dark corners of a video game, the unexplored. Maybe because now, I have guides telling me how big the game really is, and it’s not an unknown anymore. The world has a couple of cities that you explore but they are memorable. Each NPC, even without a name, has a personality and often says something funny, has an animation or a little scene, that will stuck in your head. I enjoyed how much life they give to characters with just a few bits. In traditional FF manner, you’re at first limited by walking around, mountains and water blocking your path, until you unlock new means of transportation, that unlock new paths. Pretty classic.

Squall and the Story

I will go over this part, assuming you played the game. It not only contains spoilers, but I won’t spend time summarising the story.

Squall is an amazing character. Thankfully because no others are characterized well. Rinoa character suffers from being a plot device and changes during the game, in a way I can’t attribute to character progression. Squall on the other end is very interesting. He starts as a loner, who pushes people away when they try to get closer and misses a lot of social cues. For this reason, he often passes as a jerk. When he has to talk, he often staggers, not managing to stop the flow of thoughts going through his head. As the game progresses, you realize that he’s not mean, he just suffers from an intense internal conflict and doesn’t know how to voice it. For this reason, the character can be read as slightly autistic, and you will empathize with his struggle.

Squall is also an orphan who lose several mother figures in a row in his childhood. He doesn’t want to rely on anyone anymore, he has to shield himself from others in order to not get hurt. If you never rely on anyone, nobody can betray you. But Squall falls in love for Rinoa, and slowly, learn to trust other again. He doesn’t become an extrovert, or really become chummy. It’s a subtle change.

Unfortunately, no other character gets anything close to his treatment. Selphie gets moderate attention, and with a bunch of main quest lines about her and her background, and messages from her journal, she’s the second character that evolves the most. Quistis and Zell are forgettable and get no love. Irvine is a CREEP, who tries to ditch you in second CD and only stays because he thinks he can score. Rinoa never evolves from her princess status and is only a plot device for the main story and for Squall to open up. It’s pretty disheartening to discover that my childhood beauty is empty.

I like FF8 story overall, as Squall’s own personal quest. In some parts of the story, you see the world from the eye of Laguna and his friends a character from the past. He’s a fun character, and it makes the world very exciting. You’re always thinking, “When will I meet Laguna” and discovering a place you went through as Laguna, is really satisfying. Playing the game you understand that Laguna is Squall’s Father and I would have loved to see them resolving that.

The story of FF8 is strange. It accelerates immensely towards the end. You start in a world with science fiction melded with 50’s aesthetics, then onto a full futuristic setting to end up in a ruined castle. The tonal shift is immense, and arriving at Ultimecia Castle, I wondered if they just reused an area that was meant for something else, maybe even another game.

Ultimecia is a sorceress from the future that wants to get back into the past, control another sorceress, to destroy the world via “time compression”. It’s never told why that, where she comes from, and anything else, besides she’s evil, so it’s left as an exercise to the reader. When you beat her up (She’s bullshit btw), she drop some very generic line about growing up and enjoying the present. I will put that in my “Evangelion and its consequences” box.

Once you beat her up, she gets back in time to give her power to Edea, forming a loop and Squall gets lost to time. You see him falling and lying on the ground. You then see Rinoa, coming out of nowhere to take him in her arms, cry and a flower appears. Up until the very last moment, of the credit, it’s not clear if Squall survived. AFTER the credits, a quick scene is slapped and Squall appears laughing.

To be honest it felt a bit out of place, and made me wonder if they added that because people didn’t like not being sure he survived or not.

I feel weird about this story like they had to cut contents and make it short. A lot of companions, gets no exposure beside Selphie, a whole sequence against a BIG BAD (from Laguna perspective) is not event playable and just quickly brushed on. Ultimecia, is a tonal shift and not a very good villain.

There is a big theory about Ultimecia and Rinoa being linked, maybe a different version of them, and it makes a lot of sense. We can never be sure, because it was probably axed, but it’s my game, I get to decide which story I believe.

Overall I’m glad to have finished the game and I’m getting a sort of closure.