Final fantasy 8 spinoff thread

[Patriot]

I personally thought the first two disks of FFVIII were great. But the second I put in disk 3, the experience was all downhill...

[Cybren]

I don't think FF8 is as bad as people claim it is, but neither then do I think FF7 is near as good as people claim it is (mostly, I think, everything after Midgard, and especially everything after disc 1, was boring and written without any real overarching plot in mind)

[Jillers]

FFVIII, for me, wouldn't have been an awful game if it wasn't for the rabid fanbase; I could have let it just gather dust and be forgotten if it wasn't for the people who claim it is the BESTST FINAL FANTASY EVER!!11!
I was convinced, for a while, that, separate from the Final Fantasy title, it was a good RPG, so I replayed it, trying to disassociate everything I know about Final Fantasy and just play it like a game, and you know what? I still don't like it.

I guess what it comes down to for me is characters, storyline, and everything else. The everything else is a mixed bag: it looks pretty and has some great music; the world, however, feels limited, it's not immersive, the GF battle system is broken (when I beat the game I was at level 25, and it was a goddamn cake walk - I shouldn't HAVE to make it a bigger challenge, the game should give me a challenge otherwise what's the damn point?), and it's too steeped in Final Fantasy to divorce yourself from the series to take it as a random RPG (from the GF's, to the chocobos, there's no way I can not be biased and base this Final Fantasy against other ones).
The storyline. Makes. No. Sense. Tell me with a straight face that anything that happens in the game makes sense. I was frequently questioning motivations of the characters - the MAIN characters - and tried desperately to understand Time Compression, and why Ultimecia had a crazy accent, but I couldn't, and the love story was thin, at best - I mean, why on earth did Squall fall for Rinoa in the first place? And WHEN?! This is a big deal to me since you're constantly reading Squall's thoughts, Squall's whiny, emo, "woe-is-me", cry me a fucking whambulence, thoughts, and there was no gradual shift in his attitude towards Rinoa, it was "I hate you" in the 2nd disc, to "I LOVE YOU OMG!" in the 3rd.
The rest of the characters are also uninteresting; they're 1 dimensional, without even the decency of being archetypes: they're just stereotypes.
There was more character development in side characters in Final Fantasy VI (which I think is the best FF to date) than in any of the main characters in FFVIII.
I can appreciate it not having an epic feel, but it also had an empty feel to it; trying to focus on the relationships between the characters is fine, I have no problem with that at all, character studies are fantastic, and I feel that the characters should write the story; in FFVIII they didn't, yet in previous and later installments of Final Fantasy (X, X-2 and XI being exceptions as I have never played them), I had no problem believing the characters, their actions, and how everything played out, in fact I feel that FFIX was also insular and revolved more around the characters than saving the world, but it never lost it's epic feel, the world never felt empty, and the characters were never boring.
Eh... I had other points, but now they've gone out of my head.

[DrJonAngus]

I clicked on the first video on that link, and within thirty seconds I was dead sure I never wanted to hear that man's voice ever, ever, EVER again. Please don't make me...

That is Noah Antwiler a.k.a. The Spoony One. He is actually pretty funny if you give him a chance. He actually reviews mostly terrible games and movies. I know his voice isn't the most soothing, but his video series for Final Fantasy 8 is mostly for fun. I think his voice is pretty tolerable. It is not as if he has a tremendous lisp, speech impediment, etc. Anyways, I've never completed FF8, but as far as I made it, it was pretty fun. My one major gripe is the magic junctioning system, but what is the sense in beating that drum over and over again?

[Sachiel]

Out of all the games on the playstation at the time. Xenogears IMO is the best.

At least until you hit the second disc. I wanted to go to the store and ask for half of my money back.

[AwesomeAndrew]

What are you guys talking about? They never made an eighth game, it went one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, NINE, ten, eleven, twelve. Unless I'm just suppressing some horrible, horrible memory.