It's weird to think of Final Fantasy 8 as brilliant when all you hear about this game is negativity: The Orphanage, GFs, Time Compression, Ultimecia, Angst, Junction. These are usually the topic of complaints when it comes to Final Fantasy 8. To me though, Final Fantasy 8 has always been a, "Well... I don't see what's so wrong with it." kind of game to me. I played it as a kid a whole bunch of times and I always found it to be a really fun game to pick up and play. It took me a long time to beat it, I remember loading up my childhood memory save where I was fighting Adel and I had 14 Fires Junctioned into Strength and like 20 cures in Vitality. That's it. I was adorable.
I just got done replaying the Steam version of Final Fantasy 8. It was nice to relive my childhood on PC, challenge myself to a few new things and really delve into the story that everyone else seems to complain about. I kind of want to go over why I think Final Fantasy 8 is brilliant later on because I want to end this on a high note; I don't think Final Fantasy 8 is a bad game, I'd say it's a tad bit higher than average, maybe a 6/10. It's still worth playing! But like I said, I'll go into it later.
Disc 3. I think when the developers were making this game, when they got to Disc 3 they must have just gotten back from a long trip to Disney World or something because the mood of the game completely changes right here, and it's not a change for the better. For some stupid reason, you find out that everyone on your party knew each other as a child, your GFs made you forget over time, and that you must go on to fight a more powerful Sorceress from the future. Ever since the beginning of the game, small clues have been put on you about SeeD such as Seifer asking "What is SeeD?" and Squall couldn't answer. But when the answer finally comes, it comes with a monsoon of absurdities, but I want to cover these little by little so I can fully grasp just how awful the storytelling is on this chapter.
You Knew Each Other As Kids: This in itself is not stupid, and I'll cover this later. But the way the game handles it is just horrible. The problem with this is, everyone was kind of teamed up against their will but made it seem random: Squall was intended to team up with Seifer and Zell in Dollet since he was a child. Cid knew that these kids had to be with each other... And that makes sense! Except how the hell did Selphie end up in Trabia and Irvine in Galbadia? And when Irvine joins you, it wasnt because of fate, but because of a rand
om coincidence that he was Marksman and they needed a Marksman.
GFs Make You Lose Your Memory: This is stupid on every possible level. This is nothing more than a lazy plot device for the developers to make an excuse to get everyone together but make them unaware that they knew each other. See, when it comes to the idea of GFs making you lose your memory, I kind of assume that it's like radiation; if you play with it for just a few moments, it wont harm you that much. The more exposure, the more it harms you. Except Quistis says "I have a confession to make... I secretly played around with GFs". Which to me says that, around Matron, who by the way was a Sorceress, you'd imagine she could sense Magic, she had to hide her GF from her. Maybe discard it somewhere else and I imagine she was under supervision for quite a while to the point where no one remembered or saw her use it. So this means that even with a tiny bit of exposure, she still had memory loss as severe as everyone else. It's inconsistent and lazy.
Irvine Knew All Along: That picture sums it up perfectly. When you get a new job and you're assigned to B Division and you just to happen to run into someone you went to school with and they don't remember you. Your first reaction is going to be "HEY, RON! ITS BEEN SO LONG".... not completely ignore the fact because "well no one seemed to remember so I shrugged it off.", REALLY? You mean to tell me that you remeet EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. you grew up with and you just.... shrug it off? Once again, this is just lazy writing because one person in the group needed to be able to confirm what happened since everyone else forgot. Well, it's more convenient to just say one person does remember but just didn't feel like mentioning it.
The Lunar Cry: I don't know what it is about this that just makes me roll my eyes. There's millions of monsters living on the moon that apparently one day are going to climb on top of each other until they make a bridge all the way to earth and.... invade. This sounds like something from a 12 year old's fanfiction. Why are there so many monsters on the Moon? How can they survive on a dead rock? Are they feeding on each other? Do they not breathe air? How are they surviving the vacuum of space? How can they complete this bridge without any form of gravity to hold themselves together? Better yet, why are people of Earth not just launching high powered weapons at the Moon to eradicate all them? They have the Space gear, hell, they're able to maintain a Sorceress Prison that orbits earth... It's not like they're threatening anything else on the moon if they wiped out all life on it.
Junctions: I have a small secret with FF8 that I don't tell other people when it comes to Junctions. It's kind of funny actually because so many people complain that it's so hard to do anything and all you need to do is spam GFs to win fights. Well, I don't ever use my GFs because of one thing: Ifrit. Ifrit teaches you Strength Boost. Every time you gain a level, you gain 1 Strength. By the end of the game you'll be hitting quadruple digits without much effort on Junctions, however this does mean your other characters are hitting low though. I will admit the Junction system is pretty hard to maintain since your levels don't amount to squat. What I do is, I have Squall killing everything, I put 100% Death on someone's Status Junction and the other person does whatever... Then once I can get Cactuar, I train the real people since he also comes with STR Bonus. But yeah, Junctions aren't bad and can be broken.
One scene that really bugs me about Disc 3 is when Rinoa ( possessed by Ultimecia ) unlocks the first seal of Adel's Prison. She walks up to the computer, pushes a button and first seal is broken. Really? ANYONE could just walk up to this computer and just push a button and potentially release her? I mean, I know you'd need to break the second seal as well, but don't you think this seal deserves a LITTLE bit more security than just a random person coming up, pushing a button and presto?
Another thing that bugged me was Galbadia taking the Lunatic Pandora. You see, Galbadia has no ruler anymore: Deling is dead and Edea defected. Seifer was never anyone of power, she was just a knight for the Sorceress and didn't really seem to do much but his Sorceress' willing. All we really get is a small cutscene explaining this with Ultimecia telling Seifer to get the Lunatic Pandora over Tears' Point, but that's it. The state of Galbadia is never addressed or how Seifer has the power or pull to achieve something like this. You see, I'd imagine Galbadia to be a state where once the ruler is dethroned, the people would rejoice and reclaim the nation. People don't WANT to be ruled, Soldier's don't WANT to invade and conquer and especially with the morale blow of Deling's death AND the defection of the Sorceress... what exactly is motivating these people to listen to Seifer and continue being a dictatorship?
The Brilliance
Okay, now that I got all that out of the way*, I can finally explain what makes this game brilliant. So one thing that you notice when you beat the game is you go back to the past and find Edea, she tells you to go home because you're in the wrong time period and that's that. When I was a kid, this was all that scene was to me was just a scene for Edea to meet Squall for a second and then to watch her gain her powers, nothing more. Then it hit me.... The entire game is pivotal on this ENTIRE scene and I do not mean her gaining the powers.When Squall meets Edea, he tells her what SeeD is, what Garden is, their goal and everything. Right here she learns her child in the other room is this man speaking to her, and she learns that she and her husband must create a group called SeeD within a Garden whose sole purpose is to hunt down the Sorceress. With this small conversation, your destiny from Disc 1 was set. So when Zell was teamed up with you in Dollet; not a coincidence. Cid knew that one day Zell would fight the sorceress with Squall. Cid knew from the very beginning to make sure that Squall became a leader and that these kids come together and fight.
This is why I said them knowing each other as kids isn't as silly as it sounds... If anything, I think it should have been handled like they found out that Cid has been purposely teaming them up for this and that he'd reveal all this to you versus Irvine being a douche bag.
One argument people like to make is: "So the game is pointless, if you defeat Ultimecia, she just goes back in time to redo the whole thing."
Well, yes and no. Yes because it's true that Ultimecia isn't dead. She passes her powers down to Edea only for her to be battled again by Squall. But also no, because in the timeline of Squall, once Ultimecia is defeated... her reign is no longer relevant. She wont bother anyone else anymore. Ultimecia is effectively stuck in limbo and that's what the whole time compression thing was all about. You see, Ultimecia knew she was in limbo and she wanted to crunch time into a single entity so that she can recreate it and free herself from this limbo she put herself in.
Squall's angst really makes sense to me as well, especially when the cutscenes showing his background: He was raised as an orphan to a war, he was picked on all the time, the person he depended on left him very early on ( Ellone ) and this all just devastated him. It made him insecure and cut off from the rest of the world. He learned to depend on only himself because the people around him picked on him or abandoned him. If anything, this environment was what made him into the leader he is since he pretty much didn't care what people thought of him when he lead people and no one held him back during his training**. I suppose if anything is to fault him for being angsty is that he's a teenager and the text boxers show thought regularly.
And finally the last thing that I think makes this game brilliant is Laguna. Everything his guy does is just remarkable... he's another story to be told, he supplies exposition where it's VERY much needed and he's a very likeable person. In the original iteration of the game, Laguna was intended to be a second man character and I kinda wish that was still true because that would have been awesome to find out about since it contrasts heavily on Squall's depressive personality. One thing I thought was really cool was the scene where they were raising money, they did a TV show where they fought a Dragon and he was a knight.... for a sorceress. The same TV show that Seifer got his inspiration from. It's a small detail like this that could have been completely brushed off that they provided exposition for: Laguna was the Knight that Seifer watched.
All in all, I'm glad I replayed FF8 and got to learn all these neat little things and at the same time was reminded how awful the third disc was. I just hope FF9 comes to Steam soon.... I'd love to write something on that.
*- All this is speculation. If anywhere it's said otherwise, feel free to correct me.
**- Makes me wonder why he's training with Seifer if he's never once gotten along with him and doesn't rely on others for help though.
