It’s also a twist on the selective amnesia cliché. The whole GF-induced selective amnesia thing is arguably a cheap way of generating even more angst among the cast. Sorceresses are bad, but Garden staff members are no angels… How many kids lost their memories before anyone noticed? Sure, the people behind Gardens are trying to fight Sorceresses, but it could be interpreted that they are exploiting orphans to become soldiers. It raises a lot of questions about how desperate the governments and Gardens are to shape SeeDs. It doesn’t help that the usage of GF’s can ruin the memories of these young soldiers. Speaking of Gundam, I always thought that the names in VIII were some of the weirdest that I’d seen this side of the legendary anime/manga franchise, which is well-known for some cracky names. Or, to take an example outside of games but still from Japanese media, Mobile Suit Gundam. Not every game emphasizes the human cost of war even as well as Metal Gear does. But I think that the game could have emphasized the horror of child soldiers (something that still happens in the real world) and the alienation that Squall and some of his fellow SeeDs clearly feel better. That’s what SeeDs are, and what Gardens train them to be. This is clearly a game about child soldiers. Who doesn’t like a story where someone saves a person that they love? However, I still prefer the love stories of other FF games. It kind of works for me now, though, with how Rinoa saves Squall at the end. The story is built on the theme of love, which I wasn’t into at the time. This game is sometimes seen as the origin point for Square’s troubles with scripts and trying to recapture the once in a lifetime success of VII. Time travel stories can be confusing like that. The story receives complaints about how it makes no sense. But perhaps I can take a deeper look at it. This is mainly because I remember GameFan bitching about it, and I just went along with what they said for some reason. I never really liked or paid attention to the story.
The gameplay is still my favorite thing about VIII, and the thing I reminisce about the most from the game. To be fair, though, Square quickly learned their lesson and made summoning animations quicker or even skippable, if memory serves. I think that your enjoyment of VIII depends on how much of a nerd for stats and numbers you are, how much you like to bork games to make your characters as overpowered as possible, and how much patience you have for slow and repetitive battles. Imagine if there was a way of Drawing magic while attacking enemies, like a magical version of Mug (but then how would you pick which magic to Draw?). There are other repetitive problems like Drawing magic from enemies. I actually like the Guardian Force system of development, but battles are dragged down by overlong GF summoning animations. While I really like some of the elements of VIII, there are some elements that are a drag. They seemed to reuse quite a few sound effects from their Super NES/Super Famicom era. One curious thing that I find about some of Square’s earlier PS1 games is that the sound effects are a little older-sounding than you would expect from how the graphics look. If it wasn’t for “Eyes on Me”, we may never have had similar theme songs used in later FF games. Said singing by Faye Wong is so beautiful, however, that I can’t hate it. It’s not just the lyrics, but how they’re sung, too, which makes them kind of cheesy. “Shall I be the one for you/Who pinches you softly, but sure?/If frown is shown then/I will know that you are no dreamer” I also like “Eyes on Me”, despite its slightly cheesy lyrics. I like “Don’t be Afraid”, the general battle theme, but you hear it so often that it’s not “special” like my favorites are. There are many other nice themes sprinkled throughout the game. My favorites are “Liberi Fatali”, “Force Your Way”, “Shuffle or Boogie” (the Triple Triad theme), “Maybe I’m a Lion”, “Blue Fields” (the overworld theme), “Find Your Way”, and “The Castle”. Though the tracks may not be quite as iconic as VII‘s (a wild theme approaches!), there are still some great compositions. The harsh gunmetal gray look of the menus is slightly lame.
One unfortunate side effect of the realistic character proportions is how they would dwarf locations on the world map. However, there are some great spell and attack effects that look awesome and live up to the standards that you expect from Final Fantasy. In terms of realism, some find that the CGI characters fall into the dreaded uncanny valley. In some ways, while it has less flat-shaded polygons than VII, it looks a lot grainier. Playstation games generally look horribly dated by now, and while FFVIII had a more realistic style than Final Fantasy VII, it still hasn’t aged very well.
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