After Final Fantasy VII was released, Final Fantasy became vastly more popular in the western world. The eighth game, while similar in mechanics to the seventh and countless other Japanese RPGs, attempts to differ heavily in tone and story. In doing so it becomes at least a memorable experience, if less than a fantastic game.
The story of Final Fantasy VIII begins in a training facility for SeeD, which is a non-profit mercenary organization. The detached Squall, the tale’s protagonist and an up-and-coming student in SeeD, is sent along with his narcissistic rival Seifer and enthusiastic peer Zell on a field exam. Squall and Zell pass the test, but Seifer, in a stroke of overconfidence, strays from instructions and fails. Officially SeeDs, Squall and his team of other graduates are dispatched on their debut mission: to help a small resistance group capture the president of their oppressive government. Once the party arrives, who is a key figure in the rebellion other than the mysterious girl who singled out Squall for a dance on the floor at last night’s SeeD ball and then quickly disappeared afterwards. The kidnapping operation unfortunately goes awry and the chain of events that is the bulk of FFVIII’s plot begins. While this sounds like a familiar beginning for an adventure story, things soon take a turn for the bizarre and continue down that path until the very end.
Like its most recent predecessors, Final Fantasy VIII uses the Active Time Battle system, which is a semi-turn-based system with a timed aspect. Although it’s not a large problem, the timed aspect can become frustrating when enemies attack your characters while you’re looking through menus. It does what it does just fine, besides that. FFVIII’s Junction system also plays a large part in the game. Instead of characters having set paths that they follow while leveling up, each character is more or less a blank slate and you choose the roles they in your party. Magics are absorbed from enemies and are numerable. They can be cast in battle and used up or “junction”ed to a character to build their stats once that character has a Guardian Force (summonable monster) junctioned to them. Everything junctioned to a character is temporary and can be transferred to another character at any time. As you might guess, there are many, many combinations and it’s a deep system. For players without the patience or desire to explore the system, the game offers an auto-junction tool to optimize for various attributes. This can’t compare strong knowledge of the system, but it works for the most part. Despite all this, battles (outside of boss fights) still boil down to a repetitive sequence. What you specifically choose within the realms of “attack” or “heal” most of the time feels inconsequential and makes for a non-compelling experience.
Final Fantasy VIII’s other gameplay section is normal, 3D overworld exploration. There are smaller areas and a larger world connecting them. In the areas, there are people to interact with, stores and inns. You can travel between the areas with various vehicles, including rentable cars! There are no real puzzles, but there are some timed, action sequence mini-games; their impact on your enjoyment of the game will be minimal, though. A collectable card game with a little more depth is also present and can be played against NPCs.
Presentation wise, Final Fantasy VIII was well done on the PlayStation. Its pre-rendered cutscenes are still solid today and its music is varied and luscious. Unfortunately, the game has no voice acting, but that can’t be expected from a game that already utilizes four CDs without it. It also was not the standard in 1999 and really didn’t become the standard until two Final Fantasy games later. At some points in the game, a technique is used to have pre-rendered cutscenes playing in the background behind your rendered, controllable characters. It’s a wonderful trick when it appears amidst the sea of fixed camera angles and static backdrops.
Final Fantasy VIII is not the greatest game ever, but it certainly stands out from other games in its vein. The things that stick are the weird choices like parts of the plot, the presence of the Triple Triad card game and receiving money through periodic wages from SeeD instead of from enemies. These might be enough to make you want to check FFVIII out if you’re not necessarily a huge fan of the gameplay style.