Final Fantasy VIII

Squaresoft, the creator of the greatest RPGs that had laid upon this Earth, has released another great epic. Final Fantasy 8, is one of the greatest RPGs I have ever seen. The story line mostly grasped me into it, and also the graphics and gameplay.

It is about a guy named Squall Leonheart, who is part of a military sort of base called a Garden, and is training to become a SeeD. A SeeD is sort of like a special forces unit. So, as Squall goes through different missions, he meets up with various characters that seem to be very realistic, because of their attitudes and the way they act.

As you progress through the story, everthing seems to click all at once, so this showed that Squaresoft really worked on the plot.

The battle system is quite simple, it is exactly like FF7's battle system, except you won't always see a bar on the bottom of the screen.

But, they have completely removed Materia, and switched it with the Junction system. The Junction system is far more complicated than dealing with Materia, because, if you want to have magic at your disposal then you'll have to junction a GF(Gaurdian Force) to your character. A GF is just like a summon spell, except it doesn't use MP, so you can summon your GF as much as you want. But you have to treat the GFs like it was one of your own characters, because they have HP and could learn different abilites.

So, once you have junctioned a GF to one of your characters, then you can draw magic from your oppenents, cast magic, summon GFs and use items. Drawing magic from enemies is also a new addition. Drawing allows you to either cast a spell directly at the enemy, or stock it for later uses.

As you get use to these new additions, you'll get used to them and will become second nature to you.

The FMVs in FF8 are eye popping. It was amazing how you could move your character around while the FMV is still moving. So I thought that was very amazing. I also liked the fact that the characters in the game weren't deformed like in FF7. Squaresoft wanted to capture a movie like game, and I think they succeeded.

The graphical visuals in the game are outstanding. I swear, when you move around the world map, you'll think you're playing a N64 game than a PSX game.

But the thing that mostly bugged me about FF8 is that is was too short. I got through the first disk in a sinch. In FF7's first disk, it took me forever! I think that Squaresoft was thinking more on the FMVs than the length of the disks.