Just before Final Fantasy VII’s release
in early 1997, role playing games were for a niche audience only; but after its enormous
success - bringing jrpgs into the mainstream for the first time in western territories - Square began working immediately on its next fantasy epic. Development on Final Fantasy VIII began in
mid 1997. This time around, series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi accepted his most hands-off
role yet, being too busy with the direction of Square’s first feature film to be involved
in a significant way. While it was true that he hadn’t directed a Final Fantasy game
since V, he had been the creator of the original plots for VI and VII, and had closely supervised
their development. In his absence, Shinji Hashimoto served as producer, and Sakaguchi’s
protege, Yoshinori Kitase, accepted both directing and plot creation responsibilities. He delegated
scenario writing to Kazushige Nojima, who had both directed Bahamut Lagoon and helped
Kitase with scenario writing on Final Fantasy VII. Hiroyuki Ito, who co-directed Final Fantasy
VI and created the active time battle system used in previous games, was brought on again
to design the new battle system. Tetsuya Nomura, a young emerging talent within the company,
was brought on for a second time as character designer, and worked closely with art director
Yusuke Naora to create the most impressive and unique aesthetic for the series yet. And
of course, as with every other game in the series, Nobuo Uematsu was once again brought
on to write the music. With this newly appointed, but impressively decorated team in place,
it seemed Square was ready fill Sakaguchi’s shoes and move forward with the next installment
of their flagship series. The real question, however, would be whether this contemporary
team, many members of which had been brought up to take veteran developers’ places, could
build a game that would both integrate their own original ideas and also maintain a spirit
of tradition and faithfulness to the games that had come before. For the most part, I'd
say they were successful in doing this, but I do think that the short turnaround of the
game, which released only a year and half after development began, hurt the potential
of what were otherwise exceptional ideas across the board. One of the most substantial changes made to
final fantasy VIII over previous iterations was its visual design. Characters of the previous
games had been classically designed disproportionately, with large heads, small bodies, and exaggerated
expressions. However, this time around Yoshinori Kitase wanted to incorporate a more thematic
look by combining fantasy with realism. In order to accomplish this, he aimed to create
a cast of characters that looked and felt like real people. One way in which this was
accomplished was through the use of motion capture technology during the full motion
video sequences, making the character movements as lifelike as possible. I think it’s also
interesting to note that certain characters that Tetsuya Nomura had designed in the past
were revived for Final Fantasy VIII, including Sorceress Edea, Fujin and Raijin; the latter
two having been discarded from Final Fantasy VII with the inclusion of the Turks. Art director
Yusuke Naora once said in an interview that Final Fantasy VIII was meant to be a “bright,
fresh final fantasy”, in contrast with the previous two games in the series. This change
of direction can be seen commonly throughout the game as Naora attempt to enhance the world
through bright lighting and atmospheric shadow effects. Since most of the designers for the
project had also been involved with VI and VII, this change was welcomed by most, and as
the series had proven capable many times in the past, Final Fantasy VIII became a vastly
different experience from any other Final Fantasy before it. As part of Kitase’s vision
for the project, Final Fantasy VIII’s locations were heavily inspired by internationally familiar
places, giving the game the desired foreign atmosphere. To strengthen this concept, the
characters were also designed to look predominantly European. There’s no doubt that the game
has a very strong visual design, it looks leaps and bounds better than Final Fantasy
VII, and I really like the proportioned look for the characters. When it comes to graphical
spectacle, especially on the PS1, there weren’t many games, if any, that could stand
next to Final Fantasy VIII at the time it was released. Final Fantasy VIII tells the story of Squall
Leonhart, an introverted, aloof, but gifted student of a mercenary military academy called
Balamb Garden. The Garden boasts an elite fighting force called SeeD, which Squall and
many of the other protagonists of the game are hoping to be inducted into. As the game
begins, the player takes control of Squall on the day of a prerequisite mission before
his final exam. The mission is a success, and during the graduation
ceremony Squall meets Final Fantasy VIII’s other leading protagonist Rinoa Hartily. The
relationship between Squall and Rinoa is important to note because for the first time in the
series, a romance took a predominant place in the overall narrative arch. Unfortunately,
the developers didn’t quite explore this relationship as deeply as I would have liked to have
seen, but there are
still some compelling scenes despite the fact the stunted focus between the romance and
the main plot can dilute its emotional impact. This subplot, like many features of this game,
is polarizing for many players - and whether or not it resonates with you will depend entirely
on your personal taste and experience. There are some who will relate immediately to the
impulsive, alternating, and circular nature of many real world romantic relationships,
while others might find it dense and impassive. I think its effectiveness is sufficient
enough when viewed under the correct perspective, though I find some of the other romantic subplots
in the game to be far more compelling and subtle. Whether or not you end up enjoying
it might actually be highly influenced by your opinion of the main character, which
is again, a topic that divides a lot of fans of this series. I personally like Squall,
and the entire cast of the game for that matter, despite the fact that there is a considerable
lack of character development when compared to Final Fantasy VI and VII. Many people will criticise
the game for this reason, and I can certainly understand that point of view, but I don’t
agree that a deep exploration of each character’s personal backstory is a necessary or mandatory element to create a complimentary ensemble. I like these characters because their distinctive
personalities create terrific balance between them, and the well written dialogue - which
proved to be the first truly excellent english localization effort in the series - really
helps to make the party feel authentic. The way the characters play off of eachother is
both subtle and totally natural, and in my opinion also incredibly entertaining. It’s also important to keep in mind that
this choice to avoid telling the backstories of the cast was done intentionally to supplement
the main story. Without spoiling how this was done, and while I admittedly strongly
disliked their reasons for doing so, it's nevertheless important to note that it was
done for a reason. Excluding that notorious scene, a revelation which in my opinion feels
contrived and adds nothing of substance to the story, I would say that the main plot
is very well constructed. There were many ideas that were incredibly ambitious and innovative.
For example, while most of the game takes place from Squall’s perspective, there are
many moments throughout where the player is taken out of that perspective to experience
a completely different place and time - with a separate cast of characters whose involvement
in the plot differs tremendously from those of the main cast. This introduced a sense
of mystery and curiosity about how these events would relate with the overall plot, and that
alone kept me intrigued throughout the bulk of the experience The pacing of the
story is also done with excellent precision, unlike Final Fantasy VI and VII, which both had
spots where the story began to drag for the sake of padding the game with extra content.
Final Fantasy VIII’s story never feels this way, with most scenes nailing both the appropriate
tone and time spent on relevant exposition. It’s not my favorite story in the series,
but I do think it’s undervalued by a lot of people. What it does well, it does to a
level that parallels the best games in the series, but where it falters… it does so
to a pretty substantial level - though the game’s failures are not nearly as abundant
as many would lead you to believe. I feel like this is at least partly due, as mentioned
previously, to the game’s short development cycle. With even just an extra year of development
time, I think a lot of these wrinkles could have been smoothed out. This sentiment translates pretty well into
how I feel about Final Fantasy VIII’s battle mechanics and junctioning system as well.
Again, the new ideas implemented here were solid, exceptional even, but in my opinion
could have used more development time to reach their potential. Junctioning in particular
is actually a fascinating game mechanic. The entire concept is centered on the use of summons,
which are called Guardian Forces in this game. The idea behind junctioning Guardian Forces
is actually pretty similar to assigning Espers in Final Fantasy VI, or materia in Final Fantasy VII,
where abilities for the junctioned Guardian Force are unlocked over time as the player
earns AP in battle. Additionally, the player can also junction magic spells directly to
the characters’ statistics, which act as a substitute for armor and accessories. Another
interesting change comes in the form of weapon upgrading rather than buying and selling weapons
at shops like in the previous games. Each character in Final Fantasy VIII has a unique
weapon that can be upgraded, and doing so affects the weapon’s appearance, power,
and limit break, which is actually a pretty interesting way of streamlining the inventory. One change I wasn’t thrilled to see comes
in how Final Fantasy VIII’s limit break system works. Final Fantasy VII really got the system
right, making limit breaks an important part of battles that could be used often and saved
from one battle to the next. This game goes back to utilizing limit breaks similarly to
how desperation attacks were used in VI. When a character is low on hp - or in other words,
when a character is about to die - THEN limit breaks come into effect. These attacks do
feature interactive elements that range from randomly selected spells to precise button
input sequences, but in order to even see them, at least in the early game, you have
to allow your characters to fall to a low percentage of their HP… which is something
I make a point NOT to do when I play games, and I figure a lot of other people are the same way.
There is a spell later in the game that allows limit breaks to come up more frequently regardless
of your character’s HP, but gathering and casting magic is a little unintuitive in this
game as well. Unlike most games in the series, Final Fantasy
VIII does not include a magic system that utilizes magic points. Instead, the player has to either
draw spells from monsters and designated draw points, or refine items and cards into spells,
which can be stored just like any other item. The draw system is pretty universally heralded
as the most frustrating aspect of the game, because what it really amounts to
is a lot of grinding. To be fair though, if the player uses refining efficiently, then
there really isn’t any need to draw spells at all, as any spell the player could ever
need can be obtained through this process - which is both a quicker and more efficient
way of obtaining spells. My biggest problem with the junctioning system is not in how
magic is obtained, but rather in how it intrinsically promotes the minimal use of spell casting
because the characters’ stats are tied directly to the number of spells they have junctioned.
In other words, the more spells you junction to any particular stat, the higher the boost
to that stat is going to be. This means that by casting magic, you can in essence also
slowly weaken your character. It doesn’t make much of a difference if you use the spell
10 to 15 times before replenishing, but if you really rely on magic in battle, you can
greatly decrease your character’s stat bonuses. This of course, is only an issue for the spells
you actually have junctioned, and defenders of the system will point out that you can
always just junction spells that you don’t plan on using in battle, but the answer isn't quite that simple for people who like to optimize their characters. Even
if you do avoid junctioning spells that you want to use in battle, physical attacks tend to
be far more effective than magic on the whole in dealing damage anyway, especially for those
who do enjoy playing optimally. Because of this, gathering the most powerful spells you
can find and junctioning them to your strength, vitality, and HP makes the battles really easy - to the point where most monsters can be easily destroyed by a single physical
attack. This is possible not because the junctioning system is broken, or inherently flawed, or
anything like that, but because junctioning is paired with an incompatible leveling system. In Final Fantasy VIII, enemies’ levels around
the world actually scale with Squall. In essence, the greater Squall’s level is the more powerful
the enemies become. We’ve seen level scaling like this in other rpgs like The Elder Scrolls,
but there’s a reason why you don’t typically find this kind of level scaling in turn based
rpgs like Final Fantasy. In the Elder Scrolls, you’re character levels up not
only by engaging in battle, but also by increasing passive abilities such as sneaking, acrobatics,
or speechcraft. In other words, you level up through many different kinds of interactions
with the world, and by doing so, the power of the enemies around you continues to scale
at a consistent rate. In turn based rpgs, however, your party only levels up by engaging
in battle and gaining experience points. What this means is that enemies only have one way
to get stronger - and that is for the player to engage them in battle. However, due to
the introduction of the junctioning system, there is more than one way for the player
to get stronger. Since the characters’ statistics can be upgraded by junctioning more powerful
spells, leveling up is no longer necessary, especially since you can keep the enemies’
levels VERY low by avoiding battles. This makes it possible to shatter the game’s
difficulty with relative ease. For example, tents are available in the very first town
of the game, and tents can be refined into ten Curaga spells. Junctioning Curaga spells
can take your character’s HP from 400 to 3,000 right at the beginning of the game,
which will essentially make you invincible for the first two discs. Now, there might
be some people thinking, well you don’t “HAVE” to junction curaga at the
beginning of the game - you can “CHOOSE” not to over power your characters - and for
a lot of players who enjoy doing challenge runs, this game offers a lot of potential
for you because of how customizable the difficulty can be depending on how you choose to level
up and junction your characters, but as I’ve mentioned before, this kind of thing tends
to polarize people, and for people like me who look for more of an organic challenge
in the games we play, Final Fantasy VIII doesn’t have much to offer. I enjoy games where I
have to try my hardest to defeat enemies, using both my mastery of the game's mechanics
and the best strategies I can devise to proceed through the game. If I play Final Fantasy
VIII in this way, there's essentially no challenge at all, and unfortunately, challenge runs
don’t tend to excite me very much because in the back of my mind I always know that
I “could” just play optimally and proceed with ease if I wanted to. For this reason,
Final Fantasy VIII’s battle mechanics don’t really resonate with me - but for many players
these mechanics open up a wide variety of options, which can be very exciting depending
on how you like to play. Again, I feel like with a little more time, the developers might
have been able to find a way to make the game more appealing to those who enjoy playing
optimally. When it comes to side content, however, Final
Fantasy 8 has a lot to offer. Triple Triad, which is an optional card game that can be played with
just about any NPC in the game’s world, is actually a pretty brilliant mini game,
and provides a lot of strategy and challenge that I missed in the battle mechanics. This
is due to the fact that the rules of the game often change depending on which region of
the world you’re in, and let me tell you… some of these rules can make the game very
difficult to win. The Queen of Cards sidequest in general can be extremely grueling if you
plan to attempt it without resetting the game… but if you don’t, and if you want to try
to abolish certain pesky rules throughout the world that you don’t want to deal with…
you’ll find yourself doing more resetting than you ever did during chocobo breeding
in Final Fantasy VII. Most of the side quests in the game provide pretty substantial rewards,
but there are a few that don’t offer much to make the effort worth it, which unfortunately
is pretty common in this series. This game’s one unblemished feature, however,
is its musical score. For every criticism I’ve laid out thus far, I could easily forgive
it all if only because Final Fantasy VIII’s soundtrack is so magnificent. I can say without
hesitation that this soundtrack is the very best in the series, and the finest work of
Nobuo Uematsu’s career. For this installment, Uematsu sought more than ever before to center
the music on the emotional content of the game, and I for one can definitely feel that. He once said in an interview, “I think
it will be a shame if we won’t be able to cry as we play our own game.” This is a
pretty ambitious goal for a video game composer, especially considering the fact that he later
said, “it’s important to know when the characters’ emotions are at their height,
but it usually takes until a month before the game's release to finish the ending dialogue.”
Because of this, Uematsu had to rely heavily on concept art in order to come to understand
the emotions of the characters. One important departure he took from his early work was
his decision not the write character themes. His reason for the this is actually pretty
surprising. According to Uematsu, character themes from the previous games were quote,
“ineffective”. I’m not sure I agree with him, but he’s the genius not me.
He went on to say that it’s reasonable to have character themes if each character has
a highlight in the game, but he found that Final Fantasy VIII focused so much on Squall
and Rinoa’s romance that he decided to focus on creating a theme for them instead. The
result, was Eyes On Me. Towards the end of Final Fantasy VII’s development, many of the developers suggested using a popular singer for the main theme, but the idea was eventually
abandoned due to the poor fit with the game’s themes and storyline. However, for Final Fantasy
VIII, Uematsu believed that a ballad would fit nicely with the love centered themes of the
game. Chinese pop singer Fay Wong was chosen to perform the piece, with Uematsu claiming
that her voice and mood seemed to match his image of the song, and that her ethnicity
fit the international image of Final Fantasy. The song as a single went on to sell 4 hundred
thousand copies in Japan, setting the record for the highest selling video game music disc
ever released at that time. Another noteworthy piece to emerge from this soundtrack is Liberi
Fatali. In english it translates to children of fate, and it might be my favorite song
in the series. It’s fairly common to find fans who debate whether Dancing Mad or One
Winged Angel is the best piece of music Uematsu has ever written, but in my opinion, Liberi
Fatali beats them both by a country mile. Admittedly this is partly due to the fact that it's the first fully orchestrated piece to be featured in a Final Fantasy game, but really
its more than that. There’s something about the way the song builds in its early stages,
the power of its crescendos, the complexity and variance between its movements, the balance
and harmony of its mix… it's just an absolutely masterful show of musical composition and
it pumps me up every time I hear it. Its so remarkable in fact, that it was even selected
to be played during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. Final Fantasy VIII’s entire
soundtrack is incredibly impressive. There are so many pieces that to this day give me
chills, especially fisherman’s horizon… I LOVE this song. Overall, Final Fantasy VIII is a fresh experience
with a ton of exceptionally innovative ideas. It has a great cast of characters that are
easy to get behind, and a well constructed story that unfortunately fumbles a bit from
time to time, though there really are some incredibly effective moments. It introduces
an interesting junctioning system that boasts a lot of depth, but coupled with an incompatible
leveling scaling system and card refining, it makes it a little too easy to break the
game’s difficulty and eliminates a lot of strategy from battles. There’s a lot to
love, but also a lot to criticize, which I feel is mostly due to a the game’s short
development cycle. It’s a game that polarizes a lot players, and creates some heated debates
online, so whether or not you enjoy it will likely depend on your personal taste and experience.
In my opinion, it’s a solid entry to an amazing series that I have a lot of respect
for precisely because of the fact that the developers tried to do something different.
My final score for the game is 3 1/2 dancing chocobos out of 5.
