The Worst PlayStation Final Fantasy...
Written: Aug 03 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great Graphics, Awesome FMVs...
Cons: Poor Battle System, Poor Magic System, Poor GF System...
The Bottom Line: It's Final Fantasy! It may be the weakest PlayStation Final Fantasy, but still worth the $20.
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| jeremy1456's Full Review: Final Fantasy VIII for PlayStation 1 |
The Final Fantasy series is the most popular RPG franchise, well on this continent anyways, in Japan Dragon Quest beats Final Fantasy easily. But anyways, back to the review. Final Fantasy VII was extremely revelutionary, and it brought in a healthy quantity of dough to SquareSoft and Sony. So with all the success of Final Fantasy VII SquareSoft thought to themselves, "We need to make another Final Fantasy game that will make FF VII seem like yesterdays news." Well, you can't blame them for trying, can you? I remember seeing comercials for this game, advertising it and it's whole romance plot, which by the way wasn't even evident until near the end of the game. SquareSoft completely over-hyped this game , and with the recently grown following SquareSoft had generated from Final Fantasy VII, they decided to redo almost everything that made FFVII great: the battle system, the magic system, the Special moves and such system, and even the weapon upgrade system.
All of these upgrades in my eyes were failures, with the redone skills system you must have Guardian Forces (GFs) equipped before you can perform any type of special move, be it summoning, magic casting, or anything besides the "fight" command. The magic system was the biggest failure though, do you know how much it sucks to have to use the draw command to drain spells from the enemies? And not only that, but you draw a certain number and that is how many times you can cast that particular spell. But the new thing I hated the most, is how you are expected to win battles. It seems the only way to win in the beginning of the game is to repeatedly summon your GF, which takes most of the strategy out of the game. I mean come on!
The Battle System
The battle system to this game really wouldn't have been all that bad if SquareSoft hadn't made you dependent on GFs through most of the game. And to make matters worse, the GFs take so long to complete the summon, sometimes I can set the controller down and rest my tired eyes for awhile after I set my characters to summon a GF.
I'd have to say that out of any Final Fantasy in the series, this one has got the absolute worst battle system to it. I wish Square could have implemented more strategy into it, rather than the repeated push of the X button on the summon command. Bad move Square!
While the Summons of the game are lengthy and full of creativity, the special moves aren't all that great. But I enjoyed the limit breaks, they are pretty creative sometimes, while other times they have just been copied from someplace else.
The Skills System
The special moves/skills system isn't all that great either, just the simple GF learns it so you can use it. You learn skills through battles, the more you fight the more moves your GF learns. It is kinda like the espers from Final Fantasy 6, and the crystal shards from Final Fantasy 5, except for the fact that your character does not learn these moves permanetly, but only can perform these techniques or keep the status enhancements while the proper GF is equipped. Bummer.
The Magic System
I usually don't mention this, but I thought thatsince it is so drastically different from most RPGs that I should explain it a little. Well first you must equip the command "Draw" on a character, any character. Then you must get in a battle and select the draw command and use it against an enemy, and Ta-da! You have magic, but first you must equip the magic command for your characters use.
Well now on to my ratings, nothing has changed, except well....I have become a little stricter with my last few Video Game reviews, so I will continue my Strictness with this game...
Graphics 5/5
Well maybe I aven't gotten much stricter haha, but still there is no denying that Final Fantasy 8 is chock full of eye candy. This is the only positive upgrade from Final Fantasy VII that I can think of in one sitting, the Final Fantasy series went from punching glove hands in FFVII, to characters that were highly detailed and not deformed in the least in FFVIII. And the FMV squences are awesome, my personal favorite is the opening scene where Squall and his rival Seifer are duking it out. All in all a pretty game.
Character Design
I decided not to rate this, but just to count it in the graphics category. In my opnion, Squall is the coolest looking Final Fantasy Star ever. Seifer, Zell, Irvine, and Rinoa aren't all that bad either, but Selfie was awfully designed, as was the sorceress Ultimecia. Great job again Square!
Story 2/5
For most of the game it seems like there isn't even a main enemy, well unless you count Edea and Seifer, but I don't. The story is inexcusably slow in some parts, I went through a lot of the game confused on what I was doing, and why I was doing it. And to make matters worse Squall is a very quite and insecure character in the beginning of the game, something I dislike in a person that has a starring role in a movie or game. Throughout the game Squall is basically forced to save Rinoa, even though he would rather not. Well all in all I don't think it was wise for SquareSoft to advertise this as a romance RPG, the romance doesn't start until about the 3rd disk.
Warning: Massive Spoilers in this Paragraph
The beginning cinema shows an ocean shore, with waves pounding while chanting is playing in the background, then the scene changes and it shows you a girl in a flower field, and two men sword fighting, and a lot of other stuff not worth mentioning. Anyway the two men sword fighting are named Squall and Seifer, after Squall takes a blow to the face he gets angry and does the same to Seifer. Squall makes up in a hospital bed, and that is the start of his journey as a SeeD.
Control 4/5
As one of the first games I played on the PlayStation that supports the analog controller, I must commend the versatility of Squall as you move him about on the world map, and in villages and the like. Another subject in which FFVIII excels.
Sound 2/5
Ok, now the music was a big disappointment for me. I was just getting used to the awesome music from Final Fantasy VII when this game ruined it for me, but oh well. I enjoyed one, count it, one song off this game, and that is the boss battle theme. I absolutely hated the world map theme, I would always turn down the volume on my TV to avoid gritting my teeth together.
Sound Effects
All of the sound effects sound right to me, that's why I gave the overall sound 2 instead of 1 point. Well I can't think of anything else to mention about the sound effects, so I will continue on.
MultiPlayer N/A
Multiplayer in a PlayStation Final Fantasy Game? Yeah right, I can only wish...
TOTAL: 14/20
Overall Grade = C
Even though this game has it's cons, it also has it's pros, so I recommend this to any RPG lover, non RPG lovers may lose interest though.
Recommended:
Yes
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jeremy1456
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