RELATED: Final Fantasy - The 10 Games With The Best StoriesĪll of this is to say that it was nigh-impossible for Square to live up to the astronomically high expectations set by Final Fantasy VIII's predecessor.
On top of presentation and marketing, the game is quite simply that good and would stand as one the best Final Fantasy games of all time even without its awesome reputation. Final Fantasy VII is the game that blew everyone away with its cinematic presentation and mind-bending graphics, ensuring that it was wholly unlike anything that anyone at the time had played before. Fans can only imagine though, because all of those honors go to Final Fantasy VII. It's possible that there's some alternate universe out there where Final Fantasy VIII was the first entry in the franchise to release on the PlayStation, the title that would make the jump to 3D graphics, that would receive the most robust marketing campaign in franchise history, and that would make permanent inroads in North America in a way no other title did. 3 Final Fantasy VII Is An Tough Act To Follow
It's this flexibility that continues to win it so much favor from fans, even though it is a significant departure from the franchise's other character-building systems. Still, the system afforded players who are into number crunching a lot of control over what each character's stats would look like when going into an encounter. Enemies in Final Fantasy VIII scale to the player's level, which means that the player must junction magic to their stats to gain an advantage in most encounters. It ruffled feathers as a design choice though, because it encouraged players to junction magic to their stats rather than using it in combat, and because it essentially replaced the game's leveling system. Final Fantasy VIII is notorious for having some of the most unintentionally overpowered attacks in Final Fantasy, after all. It gives players an unprecedented degree of freedom over how characters could function, as well as introduced some insanely exploitable stat buffs for those who learned to push the system to its limits. One of the things that made Final Fantasy VIII so controversial was its Junction system, wherein magic cards could be drawn from enemies, and then that magic could be junction'd to a character to boost their stats. Both Squall and Rinoa are deeply flawed individuals, with a lot of baggage from their pasts that needs to be dealt with, but that sets up an exceptional romantic arc for the two that's sure to keep players invested throughout. The backstories of Final Fantasy VIII's cast feel, as a whole, quite believable, and they influence the ways the characters act in a nuanced manner. RELATED: Final Fantasy - What Your Favorite Job Says About YouĪnother reason their relationship works as well as it does is the comparatively grounded and believable character writing. Too often in RPGs the relationship of the protagonist to his or her love interest feels like a foregone conclusion rather than something that develops organically, but Final Fantasy VIII deftly avoids this shortcoming. Their eventual relationship feels truly earned, as they each have to undergo major character growth to make things work, which lends a critical sense of believability to the two as characters. Protagonist Squall and his love interest, Rinoa, form the emotional core of Final Fantasy VII I's narrative in what is perhaps one of the most thoughtful and well-executed love stories that the Final Fantasy franchise has to offer (no offense to Final Fantasy X fans). Supported by a memorable soundtrack, players may find themselves spending entirely too much time exploring the environment and talking to NPCs. Perhaps most importantly, though, Balamb Garden is just a really cool space to explore.
This setting was, and still is a rather radical departure from the typical Final Fantasy structure, especially when it's compared to Final Fantasy VII which follows a more traditional RPG structure. It's also a pretty unique theme for the Final Fantasy franchise, which usually sees its characters setting off on grand adventures at the beginning of the game rather than hanging out at school. Magic soldier school is a pretty cool concept on face, but it also gives the story a lot of room to establish its characters in the earlier parts of the game. The opening acts of Final Fantasy VIII take place in the Garden, an educational institution designed to prepare youths for military service, and it's where players find our protagonist at the start of the game.