The first RPG I ever played to completion was Persona 5 on the PS3. I bought it for something like $15-$20, and finally played more than the intro because I wanted to play down some of my PS3 backlog. While I'm not reviewing Persona 5 any time soon, that did spark my interest in turn-based games. Before that, I had dismissed them entirely as boring, slow-plodding adventures that could range from massively easy to impossible to even pick up. In that regard, I was right, but having never given the genre a chance, I didn't realize that the in-between could be fun, too. For that matter, even the ridiculously easy ones could be fun if they had a good enough setting and story. So, having beaten Persona 5, then 4 (which I had owned for longer on PlayStation 2), I decided to find another RPG to play.
In the end, I settled on Final Fantasy VIII, mostly because I had heard it had a unique and novel approach to the RPG format, which I wanted to try for myself.
First Impressions
I heard about this game first from The Completionist on YouTube, it was his 400th completed game. So, I hardly went into this game blind. However, his review didn't really sell me on playing the game, he had pretty mixed opinions about it. He said it was good, worth a play, but that you should draw your own conclusions after that.
So skipping over the rest of the story of how I got the game (I'm honestly not 100% sure at this point, except that it included the soundtrack), let's talk about the intro.
Intro Scenes, First Few Battles
No matter which platform you bought this on, you ought to start the game on your biggest TV with your best speakers. If this sounds odd to you, don't worry, it would have sounded odd to me, too, had I not already watched the intro on YouTube first. In spite of the fact that this is very much a PlayStation 1 game, the presentation actually really shines on the big screen. I would argue this holds true to some degree even with the original release, though bear in mind when I say things like this that I did play the HD remaster version, both on PS4 and on PC. You're in for one of the most epic (if unfocused) intro scenes I've ever seen in a video game. If you think watching an epic sword fight mixed with flashes to fully pre-rendered game moments backed by a dramatic (and surprisingly well-composed) Latin choir piece is going to look right on an undocked Switch, I guess that's your call but I really would recommend giving this the big-screen treatment. It sets up the tone of the game pretty well, too.
After that, we switch to the main character in bed, recovering from the sword fight we just saw. This is another touch I really appreciate, some games split their cutscene characters apart from the in-game characters, leading to a really jarring presentation, this isn't one of those games.
After wandering around and talking to some characters, we're off to the fire caverns to capture a guardian force (which they unfortunately abbreviate to GF throughout the game). But wait! We can't go yet, you don't know how to junction your GFs! Tutorial time!
Honestly, I've heard a lot of people online say that they hate this game, that it's too complicated or too hard, and they never got into it. These opening tutorials are why, almost without a doubt. The first one stops you in your tracks and explains GF junctioning all at once, before you've fought a single battle. You'll probably kind of get what a GF is just based on what the tutorial is doing, but it's not super clear.
Junctioning? That's not a word...
Yeah, this is where I shift from writing a review to writing a guide on how to play the game. The in-game tutorials suck so badly that I don't feel like I can leave this alone. I'm going to try to explain the system, then walk through a scenario in-game that I think would help you learn this on your own. Again, these first couple tutorials tell you everything you need to know, but they do it like a traditional college lecture does, and you're not going to remember any of it, just like you probably don't remember most of your college (or high school) lectures. It's not a format that's good at all to teach someone something in any case, games included.
Characters in FFVIII don't have all that many inherent abilities, stat advantages, or progression on their own. Rather, they equip or "junction" a guardian force. This guardian force acts as two different things. First of all, it's a summon. Summoning a guardian force is (for the majority of the game) the most powerful move you can make, but it comes with a time penalty. I'll get into why that's important when I touch on battle. The second use of a guardian force is to impart abilities to the character, and allow them to use magic. This means that which GF each character has equipped ends up being more important than which character has equipped them.
If you've played the Persona series (at least since Persona 3) this should sound pretty familiar. You can think of each character as having the power of the wild card, and the GFs are sort of like personas. They don't impart elemental strengths, weaknesses, or abilities, however. They instead let you adjust certain stats yourself, and they give you the ability to cast any magic you have.
Each character can then pick 3 in-battle commands (in addition to attack, which every character always has), in addition to a number of abilities. Early game, you don't have any abilities, so it's just battle commands. The starting commands are Magic, Item, GF, and Draw. You'll note though that I just listed four commands, and you can only use three at a time, so you'll need to pick carefully. I recommend GF, Item, then Draw in that order for early game. You'll see why I didn't include magic soon.
Magic is handled very differently in FFVIII than most RPGs, including other Final Fantasy games. Rather than using magic points, the game treats each spell like a collectible item. You can collect up to 100 of a single spell, and every time you cast that spell, you take one from the pile. I like to think of it like collecting cards (though the game has that, too). The most basic way to collect more magic is to draw it from enemies. In battle, you can use the Draw command to take some magic from that enemy. You can then either stock that magic, and put it in your own pile, or you can cast it on the spot.
This is where things get somewhat more interesting, and where the junction system becomes really deep. If the GF you have equipped has the ability to junction to a certain stat, you can tie the amount, power, and type of one of your stacks of magic to that stat. For example, if the GF has the ability HP-J, you can junction some magic to your HP stat, raising your HP based on the amount, power, and type of the magic you junction to it. For instance, if I have 25 fires, and I junction that to HP, the max HP of my character will go up. From that point until I have a full pile of fire, if I draw another fire, my character's max HP will rise. Fire isn't healing magic. This means that it's not very closely associated with health. If I were to junction cure instead, each cure spell I have stocked will count for an even greater rise in max HP. Same thing works in reverse for strength (which they abbreviate as 'ST').
Later in the game, you can also junction an element to your attack. This means if you attack an enemy weak to fire with fire junctioned to your EL-ATK stat, you'll do more damage. If they're strong to fire, you'll do less.
Summoning a GF
FFVIII uses Square's somewhat famous "Active Time Battle" system. It's turn based, kind of, but the turns aren't in some set order. Instead, you perform an action as one character, then that character has to recharge for a moment before you can command them again. If you change their speed stat, this changes how quickly they recharge and lets you perform actions as them in battle more often.
I mentioned that if you summon a GF, it requires a little time to work. This is why that's important. Whichever character is summoning the GF essentially gets "replaced" by them for a short period, then the GF performs a very powerful magic spell (depending on which one) once enough time has passed. While this is happening, your character's HP gets replaced by the GF's HP. This is nice if you know you're about to get KO'ed but don't have enough health to stop it, since the GF can take the hit (and potentially the fall) for your character. This can stop you from getting a game over, but it means you can't summon that GF until you revive them. It can also be a curse, however, since if you're trying to use their abilities to deal a lot of damage, they could fall mid way through that charge period, meaning you wasted a turn and won't get to summon that GF again until you revive it. You can't revive a GF in battle, so this keeps it from being a silver bullet to never get a game over.
My Recommended Early-Game Playbook
Once you get to the point where the game starts the GF junctioning tutorial, try your best to follow along. It really does explain everything you need to know, even if it's not doing it in the best way possible. Once it's done, junction each of the two GFs you have to each of the two characters in your party. Which one goes where isn't super important, though they do have varying "compatibility" with each character, which determines how fast that character can summon them. The best combination for compatibility is probably Quezacotl to Squall and Shiva to Quistis, though it's still not a major difference. Then, when asked to pick skills, pick GF, ITem, then Draw in that order. If you would rather pick magic instead of item, that's fine, but don't pick both. Also, remember that using magic has some drawbacks, especially early game when you don't have much.
Once you're junctioned and ready to go, leave the Garden and you'll find yourself on the world map. I don't recommend that you go straight for the fire caverns, however. I would instead recommend that you walk around the opening area and fight a few monsters. Draw some magic from them, and maybe every 2-3 battles or so walk into one of the forests and battle those monsters. If you see a T-Rexaur, escape using R2+L2. Hold them down until your characters run away. Otherwise, all of the monsters in this area should be reasonably easy to defeat. Some of the monsters in the forest have cure, draw as much of this as you can, and then draw-cast it to your characters to keep their health up.
Between each battle, I would encourage you to jump into the pause menu (triangle on PlayStation, Y on XBOX, I don't know what it is with a keyboard), then select "Junction", pick each character, then select "Auto" and pick one of the options. The game will automatically adjust your character's junctions based on what you pick. If you pick Atk, it optimizes for strength. If you pick Def, it optimizes for HP, etc. You can try the Junction -> Magic option to junction manually, but I would actually recommend you lean on the "Auto" function as much as possible then tweak its recommendations as you see fit from there, rather than trying to manually junction everything yourself.
Keep doing this until it feels straightforward. It shouldn't take too long, but you'll know what you're doing for much of the game once you're used to this.
You also should know that player level doesn't matter very much, the enemies scale with your level, more or less.
First Impressions?
I had to play the opening scenes 4-5 times to figure this out. While I'm glad I did, I'm not sure why I did. The opening cutscene is beautiful, both in sound and visuals, but the actual opening gameplay is an info dump and you're expected to remember all of it. The opening as a whole is therefore kind of mixed, in my opinion. Great atmosphere and character introduction, but horrible tutorials for a completely new gameplay system that's never been used before or since, to my knowledge.
However, right from the outset you can tell why this game is special. The characters are well developed, and the gameplay is very nearly completely unique.
Gameplay
I've talked a lot about the gameplay mechanically, but I haven't really put that many opinions in that section. In my opinion, this is the most fun an RPG can get. It's thoughtful, well-balanced (if a little on the easy side), incredibly deep, and almost as easy to mess up as to get right. It encourages a play style that's very counter to most RPGs, where instead of dispatching as many enemies as possible, you're instead trying to squeeze them for all the magic they're worth only to turn around and turn them into playing cards (I'll let you find out how on your own). It's engaging, very tactical, and rewards experimentation even in the tensest moments.
I think I can sum up my feelings about the gameplay by talking about how many times I've played the game. I've only finished it once, but I started probably 6-7 saves on PlayStation 4, got about half-way through the game in two of those only to decide I wanted to try the early game again, then got almost to the final area. I then wanted to play the game while on vacation, so I bought it on Steam, played through the first few areas, found out some new stuff about how the SeeD exam works at the beginning, then started a new save file, was underwhelmed by the effects, and played that save to the end anyhow. I enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay enough that this wasn't frustrating, it wasn't boring, and every time I started a new save the characters played completely different. Again, rough beginnings, those first few saves on PlayStation were really just me messing around with the mechanics and re-watching the tutorials to see what I missed, but by the time I got past that, I couldn't put the game down. I played other stuff in the mean time, but every time I switched, I switched back. I'll probably do another playthrough of this game sometime in the near future, which is rare for someone like me. I'm not a completionist, and I have a backlog of games to play on almost every platform I own. I like experiencing different things when I play a game, not usually exploring it to death to find the last bits of things to do. This might just be an exception.
Throughout each playthrough, I never ended up playing much Triple Triad, the game's in-game card game. Other than using the cards for other purposes, I never once felt compelled to figure it out and get good at it. I hear that it's become very popular in later games, though, so bear in mind there's this potentially awesome mini-game that you can just play at any time throughout the game that I'm not even going to explain here. There's a lot of gameplay in here for a 4-disc PlayStation game.
Story
This is a bit of an odd one. Some people think the story falls apart half-way through, but I don't agree at all. Similar to how the gameplay is unconventional, so is the story. Rather than follow one thread from beginning to end, it wanders a little bit. You're introduced to the world and characters, and then you follow them on their first mission and stick with them as they live. The story doesn't tie up every thread, but it comes very close to exploring every path the characters walk down. It's kind of like reading a really long book with a lot of subplots, you see how the characters behave in all sorts of scenarios, but it has to end at some point, so once the central conflict putting the world in turmoil is solved, the game ends.
In reality, the story is more concerned with developing the characters than it is with actually telling just one story. I kind of love this, personally, because it ends up enhancing the main story by giving context to each character's perspective on it, but it isn't maybe for everyone.
Also, Squall himself, as our main character, comes across as just mean and unreasonable until about disc 3. The game doesn't tell you that he's 17, and it doesn't tell you why he acts the way he does until the later part of mid way through the game. If you can stick with it, however, he benefits the most from character development, and grows into his role among the cast better than anyone else. I would encourage you not to put the game down because of his behavior early on, there is reason for it and he does wind up redeeming himself by the end.
I would be firmly in favor of a sequel. There's enough left unsaid by the end of the game, in spite of such a well realized world, that I think there's room for more than one spin-off exploring one or more threads, or just straight up sequels. One of the nations in the game world virtually declares war on everyone else, so what happens next? Another nation ends up with a quasi-supernatural destruction machine right next to a major city, not even for the first time. What do they do with it?
And most importantly, can we see more Laguna? If you know, you know, but Laguna is just amazing.
Graphics
Much of the game is made up of static backgrounds with 3D characters on top. Rather than make symbolic characters from simple polygons like FFVII does, each character is as close as the artists could get to their pre-rendered selves, which means that (in spite of the low-res low-poly world) they all feel consistent. The remaster skews the character models a little bit, they're not exactly faithful to the originals, but had I not said that you'd be totally forgiven for never noticing. This is probably the prettiest PlayStation game I've ever played, remastered or otherwise. I have seen gameplay of the original online, the original graphics are just as good at conveying the game, if not better, so really I have no complaints.
Sound Design, Music
Sounds in the game aren't handled with a ton of care, but honestly that's not such a bad thing. The game is an RPG, so most of the sounds you'll hear are in battle. When you're not in battle, there aren't a ton of things that make sounds, but none of them seem out of place. It's no Halo or anything, but the sound design is competent and isn't distracting.
The music, on the other hand, is probably the single best PlayStation music I've ever heard. Almost every instrument choice complements the hardware perfectly, and some of the tracks in game sound like CD audio, even though they're constructed in-engine to save RAM. Some of the tracks are CD audio, however, like the opening.
If you know Nobuo Uematsu's work elsewhere, you probably have a good idea what to expect. The man is an expert composer, and FFVIII is probably the largest recipient of his best work, only rivaled by FFX, in my opinion. The music nails the atmosphere of the game, and ranges from dramatic, to intense, to serene perfectly. I'm not 100% sure, but I remember finding the soundtrack online was one of the drivers of my decision to ultimately pick up the game. There are a few sequences that get repetitive, but especially for a PlayStation 1 game, this is the bar to reach. The only other soundtrack that I've heard on the platform that comes close is Metal Gear Solid, and even then I would count FFVIII as the superior of the two.
Conclusion
This is my favorite turn-based RPG. It's an excellent game, that takes perfect advantage of the hardware it was released on to tell a compelling story with excellently written characters, scored with a unique soundtrack. Did I mention the gameplay is really easy to get lost in? However, it's held back by a few things. Most notably, it doesn't do a very good job of introducing much of anything. What it does explain isn't explained fully, and even then is explained lecture style.
Final Fantasy VIII isn't probably for everyone. If you don't have the patience to sit down and figure out its systems, it'll feel tedious. If you don't like turn based RPGs, you might actually still like this one, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. The story introduces more threads than it ties up, and while this works great for developing its characters, it doesn't answer every question.
I would still consider this a must-try game, however. It runs on absolutely everything, partly because of its age, so if it sounds at all like you would have the patience to try something like this, I strongly encourage you to.